Cl)e ®reat JFrencl) axaritevs \ ,^ 



MADAME DE STAEL 



BY 



/ 

ALBERT SOREL 

OF THE INSTITUTE 



TRANSLATED BY 

FANNY HALE GARDINER 

TRANSLATOR OF " RUSSIA : ITS PEOPLE AND ITS LITERATURE* 




5v:3^r w 



CHICAGO 

A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 

1891 



C 146 



/ 

Copyright, 

By a. C. McClurg and Co. 

A.D. 1891. 



sssssa 






CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. Youth — Character — First Writings 
AND First Appearance before the 
World 7 

II. The Revolution — "Reflections upon 
THE Peace" — The "Essay on Fic- 
tion" 42 

III. The Book on "The Passions'' — The 
Consulate — The Book on "Litera- 
ture" — "Delphine" 79 

IV. Journeys to Germany and Italy — 

"Corinne" 129 

V Life at Coppet— The Book on Ger- 
many — The Censor and the Police 
— M. DE RoccA — The Flight . . . 154 

VI. The Work on Exile — The Flight 

through Europe — Last Years . . 177 

VII. The Book on Germany 202 

VIII. "Considerations upon the French 

Revolution" 220 

IX. Her Influence — Posterity in Poli- 
tics, History, and Literature . . 237 



MADAME DE STAEL. 



CHAPTER I. 

Youth. — Character. — First Writings and 
First Appearance before the World. 

1 766-1 789. 

ONE who knew MADAME DE Stael inti- 
mately and was thus enabled to gather 
at first hand the Incidents of her Hfe, namely, 
Madame Necker de Saussure, has said : " Her 
works are, so to speak, in an abstract form the 
memoirs of her life." Madame de Stael her- 
self said as much : '* When one writes to sat- 
isfy the inspiration that possesses the soul, 
one's writings will involuntarily reveal every 
shade of one's manner of living and thinking." 
Thus I propose seeking the inspiration of 
Madame de Stael's works by studying the 
events of her life. 

Our earliest impressions of the external 
world become, unconsciously to us, the prism 
by which everything is afterward colored. 



8 Madame de StdeL 

With Chateaubriand, it was the gloomy soH- 
tudes of Combourg, the heavy mists skirting 
the ocean and bounded only by the forests 
through which the storm-winds whistled. With 
Lamartine, it was the hills of Milly, a country 
home with quiet neighboring paths, a soft and 
filmy sky, a dim and fleeting horizon, a pious 
childhood at a Christian mother's knee. With 
Madame de Stael, it was in private life the 
scenes of a happy home, and in public those 
of a salon which was the meeting-place of the 
best intellects of the time, — where jest and in- 
spiration followed each in turn ; where all lit- 
erary questions and all the problems of the 
universe were discussed, and where, as a con- 
temporary has remarked, they discoursed end- 
lessly upon '^the great truths of Nature, the 
immortality of the soul, the love of liberty, 
and the charms and dangers of the passions." 
A house like her parents' was always her ideal 
of home ; happiness in marriage was her Uto- 
pia, and to reign over a salon was the ambition 
of her life« 

M. Necker came of a family of Irish origin, 
which turning Protestant removed first to Ger- 
many and then to Geneva, though through his 
mother he was allied to the French proscripts 
of Louis XIV. He was born a citizen of the 
Swiss Republic. On reaching manhood, and 



Youth, 9 

after a severe course of classical study, he 
turned his mind to the study of finance. This 
led him to Paris, where he entered upon his 
career of publicist and financier. Madame du 
Deffand once accused him of interminp-ling; 
metaphysics with everything that he said, and 
it is a fact that his writings are tinged with it. 
But he put none of it into his bank, which 
was prosperous. He acquired a large fortune, 
and established a reputation by his eulogy of 
Colbert, crowned by the Academy in 1773. 
Necker loved popularity and aspired to power, 
— popularity, because he believed that the gen- 
eral opinion could not err; power, because 
he thought himself capable of accomplishing 
in the interest of humanity the reform of pub- 
lic affairs. To his ambition he united the sin- 
cerity of a philanthropist i the gravity of a 
Calvinist softened by the homilies of the 
Vicaire Savoyard; much kindliness in his 
private relations; haughtiness in his political 
intercourse ; a mixture of tenderness for the 
human race and of disdain for the individual ; 
large and systematic, though abstract views 
upon affairs in general ; and uncertainty, rigid- 
ity, and minutiae in action. He was not born 
a minister. 

He had neither the force nor the judgment 
necessary to statecraft. He misunderstood 



lo Madame de StdeL 

Richelieu, he misjudged Mirabeau, he did not 
comprehend Bonaparte. He had a noble heart 
and an estimable character, but his was not a 
soul of fire. The Revolution passed him by. 
But he achieved under the old regime a suc- 
cess surprising for a Genevese, a Protestant, a 
tradesman, and a plebeian, who was forced, we 
may say, upon the King's council by the suf- 
frage of the most enlightened men of France, 
and who became popular in the most dissolute 
city in the world, among the people most 
rebelHous to the commonplace virtues and the 
creeds of Geneva. He owed this as much to 
his fortune as to his merits. His bank helped 
him to interest in his reputation the men who 
at the time dispensed glory and rewards ; he 
entertained philosophers at his table, and his 
salon was one of those which governed the 
French mind. 

Madame Necker had her share in the labori- 
ous work of her husband's success. She was 
the daughter of a Protestant minister, and was 
filled with the instinct to good works, in the 
Christian sense of the word. Charity carried 
to excess was to her a salutary exercise. She 
was refreshed by it. The life of the world was 
always to her an artificial life; yet she loved 
company, she wished to love It, and made It a 
duty to appear a brilliant member of it. She 



Youth, 1 1 

was at once diverted by it, bewildered, con- 
strained, exalted, and oppressed; she was at 
last worn out by it. Her mind was remark- 
ably cultivated ; but the flight of her spirit was 
constantly trammelled by scruples upon the 
articles of faith. She was singularly suscep- 
tible, nervously impressionable, even passion- 
ate, in her legitimate attachments, but with 
a continual self-control and a sort of secret 
prompting to austerity. In spite of her taste 
for beautiful speculations of the sentimental 
and subtle kind, in spite of her pride of hold- 
ing open house to celebrated men and of her 
desire to contribute to the reputation of an 
adored husband, she had an indescribable 
reserve and affectation amid a society into 
which she had not been born. She was a 
Genevese exiled among the Parisians, a Chris- 
tian astray among the faithless, loving them 
without believing in them, listening to them 
without approving of them, blaming them 
without hoping to convert them. She suffered 
in the noblest qualities she possessed, — her 
rectitude of heart and her upright judgment. 
She longed for another and a purer atmos- 
phere, that of her native mountains, but she 
was too enervated to endure it. She wrote to 
a friend : " Surely one might be and ought to 
be happier elsewhere than here ; but then one 



12 Madame de StdeL 

must never have felt the fatal charm which 
without giving happiness poisons forever all 
the other channels of life." 

Such is the environment amid which Germaine 
Necker was born, April 22, 1766, and was 
brought up. She was a child of astoundingly 
precocious intellect and heart, and at the same 
time of a gay temperament. She was Necker's 
joy. If he kept her in a hot-house, it was in 
order that she might expand there. The hot- 
house was not enough for Madame Necker, and 
she attempted to add thereto an ingenious and 
subtle educational apparatus. It was her dream 
to make of her daughter a masterpiece of ma- 
ternal art, knowing all things, and pious not- 
withstanding; of an enthusiastic imagination, 
yet modest in discourse and irreproachable in 
conduct; very pure yet at the same time very 
fascinating; having all the glitter of life, all 
the pleasures the world can give, yet without 
pride of life or frivolity. She wore out her 
soul in trying to realize this ideal. The child 
developed on her own part a prodigious gen- 
ius which overreached all limits. She burst 
the mould. Madame Necker's plan of edu- 
cation went to increase the lumber of peda- 
gogic Utopias. The environment carried 
everything before it. 

From the time when Germaine could think. 



Youth, 1 3 

she reasoned ; she soared as soon as she could 
move. At eleven years of age she appeared 
at the receptions seated on a little stool at her 
mother's feet, wide awake but silent. The si- 
lence which she maintained during these years 
sufficed for the rest of her life. She listened 
to Raynal, Thomas, Grimm, Bufifon, Morellet, 
and Suard, who took much notice of her, and 
amused themselves with watching the expres- 
sions which their discourses produced upon 
her mobile countenance. The theatre occupied 
a large place in their conversations. Marmon- 
tel and La Harpe discussed it continually, and 
declaimed dramatic selections. Mademoiselle 
Clairon was often present. Germaine profited 
by these lessons ; she accompanied her par- 
ents to the play, and made extracts from 
pieces. Very soon she began to compose 
pieces for puppets, of which she managed the 
strings herself; her own conceptions of life 
always carried a suggestion of this. At fifteen 
years of age she made a resume of '' L'Esprit 
des Lois," and drew up an essay on Necker's 
" Compte Rendu." Raynal asked her to give 
him for his compilation called " Deux Lides " 
an article on the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes. She read everything she could lay 
hands on, preferring novels, however, and of 
these the most exciting. There is no saying 



14 Madame de St del. 

at what age she fell upon Rousseau. He 
became her first idol. The rape of Clarisse 
became one of the events of her childhood. 
She herself says, " Werther made an epoch 
in my life." Werther melted and capti- 
vated her; Lovelace dazzled, frightened, and 
fascinated her for a long time. *' What inter- 
ested her was what made her weep," reports 
one friend. The sight of a celebrated man 
made her heart beat wildly. Discerning praise 
of her father caused her to burst into tears. 
She was seventeen years old when she asked 
the aged Marechale de Mouchy, '' Madame, 
what do you think of love ? " Such was the 
tone of her conversations and the course of 
her reveries. She fell ill. '' She may go mad, 
perhaps," said Tronchin, ''but she will cer- 
tainly be very unhappy." 

Such was the development of her mind, 
which was one of the most receptive and ex- 
pansive ever seen ; possessed with an insa- 
tiable avidity to know everything and the 
capacity to take it all in ; having not merely 
intelligence, but sympathy, a sort of divination 
of the thoughts of others, and an '' instanta- 
neous inspiration," or what amounted to that, 
in her own ideas ; apprehending and inspired, 
moreover, not by reflection, but in a flash, or, 
as it were, on the wing. There was no interval 



Character, 1 5 

between thought and speech ; the thought was 
born and quickened by speech itself. '' Con- 
versation was her inspiration and her muse," 
remarks one who best understood her and 
who has analyzed her most keenly. She 
lived in a state of perpetual expansion and 
improvisation. 

But she lacked self-government, concentra- 
tion, and patient thought. It fatigued her to 
apply herself to these. She advanced by great 
wing-strokes ; never creeping over an idea, yet 
turning it out with rare skill. She would not 
take the trouble to learn anything thoroughly. 
She knew nothing of that spiritual discipHne 
which produced the strong and healthy grace 
of a Sevigne, the natural yet grand style, the 
simple way of expressing herself better than 
any one else, the command of language re- 
newed at its sources and always the most pre- 
cise when most original. Her mind revolted 
against the leading strings of Port Royal ; her 
tongue could not endure the curb of Condil- 
lac. She did not understand submission either 
to method or grammar. Her aspirations were 
always beyond her ideas ; her heart, for analo- 
gous reasons, was very often far above her 
words and acts. 

This ardent, passionate, but straightforward 
heart, prodigal of gifts and confidences, eager 



1 6 Madame de StdeL 

for change, impatient of examination, and 
generous above all things, was also largely 
endowed with intelligence. '' I have many 
faculties for happiness," said Corinne. Ger- 
maine Necker was too eager both for happi- 
ness and knowledge, and too insatiable. She 
stopped at no obstacles amid her outbursts 
of affection, either within herself or without. 
She took no account either of the hindrances 
offered by the outside world, or of contradic- 
tory sentiments, or of any of the misfortunes 
of life which wear and tear the passions to 
tatters. Indeed all her sentiments turned to 
passions, and all her passions to storms. ''Her 
devouring imiagination," which grasped at every- 
thing around her, first seized upon herself; it 
was the lever by which she moved souls ; it 
held complete sway over her own soul, which 
never knew tranquillity. Later she said, " My 
imagination is like the tower of Ugolin." 

Nevertheless she had at bottom a good 
sense and a moral soundness which sustained 
her in time of tempest. If she could not at 
all understand that others felt differently from 
herself, her own sentiments were at least sin- 
cere. This sincerity was the measure which she 
applied to herself most scrupulously. When 
the vertigo of emotion was past, she resumed 
her equilibrium and judged herself. Her ex- 



Character, 1 7 

aminations of conscience rendered her singu- 
larly perspicacious and just These, while 
edifying to her, gave her little consolation. 
Her clear-sighted analyses were for the most 
part a refinement of torture. But as she was 
naturally kind, her self-torture heightened her 
sense of pity. 

We must note here, at the beginning, these 
singularities of her character, for her genius is 
born of them. Her life was the product of 
her tumultuous and troubled sentiments; her 
writings are the result of her self-judgment 
and her pity. As she advanced in life and 
considered her existence from a higher stand- 
point, she drew from her own trials a higher 
and purer moral. Whatever failed her in her 
own destiny she completed in her books. It 
is thus that her rich and virile works are 
brought forth amid a career of troubles, agita- 
tions, and sometimes weaknesses. 

Happily for her and for those around her, 
she felt it an absolute necessity to be amused. 
She had a large and easy good-nature, and 
when her heart was not otherwise engaged, a 
charming freedom in all her relations. 

*' Corinne was very gay in spirit. She ap- 
preciated the ridiculous with the keenness of a 
French woman, and portrayed it with the im- 
agination of an Italian, but she joined to it a 



1 8 Madame de Stdel. 

kindly feeling. One never saw in her anything 
of malice or hostility; for in every case it is 
coldness which offends, while, on the contrary, 
a lively imagination is almost always kind." 
And here is Delphine : '' Well-chosen ex- 
pressions and movements always natural, a 
gayety of spirit and a melancholy tinge of senti- 
ment, excitability and simplicity, enthusiasm 
and energy ! What an adorable mixture of 
spirit and candor, of sweetness and strength ! 
Possessing to the same degree all that could 
inspire admiration in the profoundest thinkers, 
all that could set at ease the most common- 
place minds, if they are kindly disposed and 
hope to find that same tender quality in the 
gentlest, noblest, most seductive and naive 
forms." 

It is thus she paints herself, and thus she 
would appear upon the theatre of the world. 
She can conceive neither of glory nor happi- 
ness outside that theatre. There she interests 
herself in everything, — sentiments, politics, art, 
literature, and philosophy; but to the rest of 
the universe she is indifferent. She has no lik- 
ing for the promenade ; Nature for her is dull ; 
meditation wearies her; retirement terrifies 
her; solitude fills her with horror. She has 
her vulnerable spot, and her vampire is ennui. 
Society, which is the delight of her life, is also 



Character. 1 9 

Its necessity. Only in Paris does she find 
herself at ease and comfortable. 

And yet there is something in her which 
even there is stifled and tries to burst forth. 
She places the source of happiness in enthu- 
siasm, but she seeks this happiness in a realm 
where all is shifting sand or barren waste. 
Her character rebels against the convention- 
alities and prejudices of the world, as her mind 
rebels against scholastic methods and the com- 
mon usages of language. She aspires to reign 
in society, but she hopes to dispense with the 
first condition of such a reign ; namely, eti- 
quette, the art of mastering oneself in ruling 
others. Her nature repudiates not only hypoc- 
risy and worldly strategy, but even simple dis- 
cretion and that prudence which one may call 
the spirit of tact in conduct. She knows no 
longer interval between thought and action than 
between thought and speech. '' Your char- 
acter," said a friend who knew her well, " is 
incapable of enduring the annoyances that 
one provokes by the endeavor to shine in the 
world of society." 

This dread of dulness or of emptiness, if one 
may put it so, this thirst for amusement, this 
eagerness to shine and to please, joined to an 
impossibility of self-restraint, throws her into 
perpetual inconsistencies. She has a vigorous 



20 Madame de St del, 

and impetuous soul, but she manifests all a 
woman's weakness. She says of Delphine: 
** Although the breadth of her spirit gives her 
independence, yet her character nevertheless 
needs support." Germaine was carried away 
by her heart and her genius, at the very start, 
at one bound, without regard to possibilities ; 
afterward face to face with resistance, '' her 
quick discernment of the true, the real, flashed 
a sudden illumination upon her, and at the 
same time pierced her like a sharp spur ; the 
reaction was immediate; and too frequently 
contempt of the precaution to cover her retreat 
and hide her transition made her the jest of en- 
vious and malicious mediocrity." These in- 
ternal strifes, says the most authoritative and 
most respectful of witnesses the Due Victor 
de Broglie, ''made her existence tempestuous; 
her family life passionate, ardent, and tumultu- 
ous." They at last destroyed her health, which 
had been unsettled by continual commotion 
since her earliest years. 

These fundamental contrarieties of character 
are plainly manifested in the two objects of 
worship which filled Germaine's youth, — the 
first, which lasted to the end of her life, the 
beneficent worship of the domestic hearth, 
the home of Necker ; the other a foreign idol, 
a cult of insidious mysteries and poisonous 



Character, 2 1 

perfumes, from which she detached herself 
by degrees, but which never entirely ceased to 
trouble her: I mean the worship of Rousseau. 
Both Necker and Rousseau talk much of virtue 
and promise happiness : but Necker finds hap- 
piness in virtue, and it is to this happiness that 
the disposition of Germaine invites her; Rous- 
seau finds virtue in happiness, and to this so- 
phisticated virtue Germaine is attracted by her 
imagination. 

At the point where we now take up her his- 
tory, near her twentieth year, she is still 
dreaming of it; but the dream which disturbs 
her is the same which will continue to trouble 
her through all the metamorphoses of life, — to 
be loved, as she would herself love, in an in- 
cessant ecstasy of her whole being, in a glo- 
rious felicity irradiating her whole life. At 
nineteen she wrote in her journal : '' A woman 
should have nothing in herself, but should find 
all her joy in what she loves." At thirty she 
confessed to a friend : '' I trusted everything 
to love. In youth every sentiment springs 
from that." At forty she makes Corinne say: 
*'In seeking for glory I have always hoped 
that it would cause me to love." After Ger- 
maine had attained this glory, she perceived 
that without love it is but vanity, and con- 
cluded : " Glory itself can be, for a woman, only 



2 2 Madame de StdeL 

a loud and bitter cry for happiness." Ambi- 
tion, for her, could never be more than a sur- 
passing desire to please, and a current having 
its source in love. But she desired the more 
passionately to appear brilliant as she realized 
her lack of beauty. She lacked — and she knew 
it only too well — the outward graces, those 
mute and ineffable charms which through 
the eyes find their way irresistibly to the 
heart. 

Her admirers have portrayed her as a muse, 
lyre in hand. She is Clio or Melpomene, 
" the most notable priestess of Apollo, the 
favorite of the god, whose incense is to him 
the most agreeable of all. Her large black 
eyes sparkle with genius; her hair, ebon-hued, 
falls upon her shoulders in waving ringlets; 
her features are more pronounced than deli- 
cate; one perceives in her something more 
than the common destiny of her sex." Yes, 
but of this destiny one perceives no trace 
whatever. Take away from the portrait the 
mythological attributes and the allegorical 
background, and you shall see a person of 
medium stature, rather stocky, not quite de- 
ficient in grace and ease, but without that 
lightness and nymph-like elegance which was 
the ravishing type of the beauty of that day 
immortalized by David and Gerard in the 



Character. 23 

portraits of Juliette Recamier and Madame 
Regnauld de Saint-Jean d'Angely, 

Neither is she Amelie, nor even Corinne ; she 
is Dido, virgin still, but predestinated to pas- 
sion. The features are expressive; the com- 
plexion dark rather than fresh, yet of a good 
color, which is heightened by conversation; 
the shoulders are well shaped, the arms power- 
ful, the hands robust, — the hands of a sov- 
ereign and not of a great and sentimental 
coquette ; a broad forehead ; black hair falling 
thick and curling over her shoulders ; a strong 
nose ; a mouth forcibly designed, prominent 
lips opening wide for life and speech, — the 
mouth of an orator, with a frank and kindly 
smile ; all her genius shines forth in her eyes, 
in her sparkling glances, confiding, superb, 
deep and sweet when in repose, imperious 
when lighted by a sudden flash. But to pro- 
duce this flash the tripod of inspiration must 
be close at hand. Germaine must speak in 
order to charm, and must conquer in order to 
make herself beloved ; the result is an appear- 
ance of too much eagerness in her anxiety to 
please, and even in her kindness. With her, 
ambition must serve sentiment, but sentiment 
borrows a degree of uneasiness and greediness 
from ambition. It is love, as a man conceives 
of it, — love which rules. She cannot be happy 



24 Madame de Stdel. 

unless she is ruled by the man she loves. In 
life she must have a guide, in love a master; 
yet in her life she will be the most unsub- 
missive, and in love the most despotic, of 
creatures. 

'' What did she find, she who never saw in 
the object of her choice a sublime protector, a 
strong and gentle guide, whose glance com- 
mands and entreats, and who receives on his 
knees the right to dispose of our fate?" A 
friend, '' of the same age, beside whom you 
must live and die ; a friend whose every in- 
terest is your own, whose every perspective is 
in common with yours, including that of the 
tomb." 

Such is her ideal. It is full of difficulty and. 
delusion. This romantic marriage she can 
only imagine in connection with the world she 
would live in, without which she could not live 
at all ; but that world, so frivolous and mali- 
cious, is it compatible with such a worshipful 
admiration? What man in it could sustain 
that sublime character? In the presence of 
this woman, who would shine so as to be 
loved, who would be loved only by a man 
more brilliant than herself, love would be 
born of the spark struck out by their spirits ; 
but, the flame once lighted, love would be 
consumed by it. Before even jealousy could 



Character, 25 

rend it, the rivalry of spirit would have 
wounded it incessantly. 

Read *' Delphine " again ; it is the romance of 
Madame de Stael's own life. Read especially 
the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, who 
is the realization of Delphine, and you shall see 
how in such hearts the enchantment works. 
It is at a supper-company of talkers, such as 
was then in vogue, that Mademoiselle de Les- 
pinasse meets the man who is to take posses- 
sion of her. In listening to him she feels 
herself overcome and already carried away. 
" Yes, you are very kind. I have just re-read 
your letter. It has the sweetness of Gessner 
added to the energy of Jean Jacques." And 
Delphine, after the first interview with Leonce 
in Madame de Vernon's salon, says : *' I chatted 
a long time with him, before him, for him. . . . 
Every word from Leonce added to my esteem, 
to my admiration. His manner of speaking 
was concise but energetic ; and when he used 
expressions that were full of strength and elo- 
quence, one could perceive that he spoke even 
then but half his thought, and that in the bot- 
tom of his heart there still remained stores of 
sentiment and passion which he declined to 
waste. With what interest he deigned to listen 
to me ! Nay, I cannot imagine a more delicious 
situation: thought stirred by the movement 



26 Madame de Side I. 

of the soul, the success of self-gratification 
changed to the joys of the heart, — oh, what 
happy moments ! " 

Here we have the frame and the hero, and 
we must take account of them if we would un- 
derstand what distinguishes love in the life and 
works of Madame de Stael, from the love 
of Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and 
George Sand. It is not beside the sounding 
surf, nor on the shores of the forest-girdled 
lake, nor upon the promontory of Armorica, 
nor in the desert where the noisy transports 
of Chactas are mingled with the noise of the 
storm, that Delphine and Corinne are carried 
away by love. The man who charms them is 
neither the rhetorical Saint-Preux, nor the 
stormy Rene, nor the gentle Paul, nor Stenio, 
Jocelyn, or Mauprat, but a man of the world, 
a successful man, a hero of the Academy, one 
of the men Lord Nelvil spoke of and ad- 
mired in Paris, a man of sound learning, of 
superior talent, having a lively desire to please 
even more than to be useful, craving the ap- 
plause of the salon as eagerly as that of the 
tribune, and living in the society of women 
for the sake of their praise rather than their 
love. 

In 1 78 1 Germaine met the Comte de Gui- 
bert. and her ideal was realized. She was fif- 



Character. 27 

teen, he was thirty-eight ; but she was strangely 
precocious in intellectual concerns, and Guibert 
was surrounded with so bright a halo that his 
years scarcely told against him. She did noth- 
ing but gaze at him as he passed by, and lis- 
ten to him as he talked in Madame Necker's 
salon. In the lofty carriage of his head, in 
his trenchant tones, in the authority gained by 
success, in the superb presumption of his well- 
preserved youth, in the somewhat artificial 
impetuosity of his spirit, in the very politic 
reserve of his conduct, there was something 
quite imposing which struck her fancy. She 
never suspected the subtle mechanism of this 
famous artificer of glory. Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse wrote to her about this time: *'You 
would make the happiness of a vain soul and 
the despair of a sensitive one. I fear that 
you may have to say one day, ' The thirst for 
glory has wearied my soul.' " Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse tried it and died of it. Ger- 
maine Necker tried it in her turn when she 
demanded of another Guibert, younger and 
still more brilliant, the virtue, the tenderness, 
the passion, and the genius with which she 
had once adorned the hero of her youthful 
dreams. 

These dreams are embodied in her first 
compositions. She attempted verses, but with 



28 Madame de Stdel. 

little success : the images did not come spon- 
taneously to her mind ; moreover she rebelled 
against both rhyme and rhythm. Of all the 
verses she has written I find none worth pre- 
serving except the following; these have a 
passionate and tender tone : — 

" You call me your life : call me rather your soul ; 
I want words that will last for more than a day. 
Life passes, a breath may extinguish its flame ; 
But the soul, like love, shall endure for aye." ^ 

Of the works of this period of her life the 
following have been preserved : a romantic 
comedy called " Sophie, or Secret Sentiments," 
which was printed ; " Jane Grey," a dramatic 
essay; "Montmorency," a tragedy in manu- 
script; three novels, namely, "Adelaide and 
Theodore," which is an outline of " Delphine ; " 
" Pauline," an imitation of Clarisse; and 
" Mirza, or A Traveller's Letter," — "an inci- 
dent founded upon some circumstances in the 
treatment of the negroes." These are senti- 
mental compositions, or " sensibles," as the au- 
thor is pleased to term them. Here are a few 
lines merely to show their tone : " ' Sometimes 
I have been beloved,' said Mirza. * I have 

1 " Tu m'appelles ta vie : appelles-moi ton ame ; 
Je veux un mot de toi qui dure plus qu'un jour. 
La vie est ^phemere, un souffle eteint sa flamme ; 
Mais Fame est immortelle aussi bien que I'amour." 



First Writings. 29 

perhaps longed to be susceptible; I have 
longed to know this sentiment which takes 
hold upon one's whole life, and itself shapes 
the fate of every minute of the day.' But 
Mirza has read (and read too much), and still 
more has conversed and reflected. ' It has 
never before,' she says, ' been possible to 
deceive me, or for me to deceive myself.' 
* Mirza,' cried Ximeo, * how I pity you ! 
The pleasures of thought are not enough. 
Only those of the heart satisfy all the faculties 
of the soul.' " Nothing whatever in these early 
attempts proclaims the great writer; but they 
describe a state of soul, and reveal the woman. 
This is the principal and indeed the sole in- 
terest to be found to-day in the most impor- 
tant of these youthful works, which is entitled 
'' Letters upon the Writings and Character of 
Jean Jacques Rousseau." It is a pretentious 
piece, made up of variations composed by a 
young virtnosa upon a fashionable theme for 
a parlor concert. The style is false, taste has 
changed, amateurism is out of date ; but the 
work is a declaration, almost a programme 
of Hfe. Germaine experienced the charm of 
Rousseau, but she was not entirely captivated 
by it. It was a shadow which will deepen still 
more with the years. It marks the line which 
separates Germaine Necker from the other two 



30 Madame de StdeL 

literary daughters of Jean Jacques, — Madame 
Roland and George Sand. Madame Roland is 
Heloi'se in the flesh; George Sand is Heloi'se 
raised to genius ; the former has all the virtue, 
the latter all the poetry, of Rousseau. Ger- 
maine Necker is only an enthusiastic reader 
and an undiscipHned imitator. In fact, she 
regained her self-possession, and sought inspi- 
ration from Rousseau rather than procession. 
Her style never attained the gravity of "Le 
Contrat Social " or the enchanting si'mpli- 
city of the *' Confessions," and she appropri- 
ated nothing but the rhetoric of '' Emile." To 
begin with, her inexorable good sense, her 
political inclinations, and especially the his- 
torical taste which experience developed in 
her, led her far away from Jean Jacques. For 
a complete understanding of the master she 
lacked the community of destiny which forms 
the soul-tie between him and Manon Phlipon 
or Aurore Dupin. The daughter of Necker 
had no feeling that Julie or Sophie lived again 
in herself; she had no inclination to declare 
herself citoyenne of the republic of the Contrat. 
His customs, his passions, his politics had no 
place in her world ; and she twice says as much, 
in passing the following judgments, one of 
which shadows forth the future historian, while 
the other betrays the femme d' esprit : — 



First Writings. 31 

*' Mojitesquieu is more useful to already established 
societies ; Rousseau will be more useful to those that 
are just about to be formed." 

" Julie's continual sermons to Saint- Preux are out 
of place : a guilty woman may love virtue, but she 
should not preach about it." 

The " Letters on Jean Jacques " were printed 
in 1788 and published in 1789. Germaine 
Necker was then married, and it was under 
her married name that she put forth what 
appeared as her first work. 

If ever a marriage of reason was unreason- 
able, it was that which the Neckers arranged 
for their daughter. Rarely has an affair nego- 
tiated with so many complex worldly details 
for the sake of the concerns of the heart been 
followed by sadder results. 

Madame Necker desired a great match. 
She gave some thought to young Pitt, who 
came to the Continent in 1783. Unless she 
had married Mirabeau, much older than her- 
self and very unpopular, or Bonaparte three 
years younger and still unknown, Germaine 
Necker could not have proposed a more ex- 
traordinary match for herself But she al- 
ready felt that anywhere outside of Paris was 
exile. She refused, and there ensued a stormy 
time in the family. " Hateful island ! " she 
wrote in her diary, " daily source of dread, 



32 Madame de StdeL 

future source of remorse!" They were 
obliged to fall back on a foreign minister 
accredited to the king; for only in the diplo- 
matic corps could they find a man of position 
professing the reformed religion in France. 

The lot fell to a Swede, Baron Stael Holstein ; 
he was of Mirabeau's age, and was therefore 
seventeen years older than Germaine Necker. 
He was of good birth and breeding ; a gambler, 
reckless, and not over-fortunate ; of insinuat- 
ing manners, and of a perspicacious rather than 
a broad mind, with a certain tendency toward 
mysticism which northern peoples easily ac- 
cept along with a practical care for worldly in- 
terests; above all, a diplomat, and ambitious 
for a grand marriage which should enable him 
to pay his debts and present a worthy figure as 
an ambassador. The old Comtesse de Bouf- 
flers, who was interested in him, introduced 
him to Necker's good graces, and undertook 
to obtain the favor of the King of Sweden for 
the alliance. The preliminaries lasted not less 
than five years. Finally, Gustavus III., having 
obtained from France the cession of the island 
of Saint-Barthelemy, consented to raise his 
legation at Paris to the rank of an embassy, on 
condition that Mademoiselle Necker's dower 
should defray the expense. Necker demanded 
a guaranty that it should be a perpetual em- 



First Writings, 33 

bassy, and that the title of count should be 
bestowed upon Stael. Gustavus III. promised 
the perpetuity of the embassy, but withheld 
the rank of count. Necker consented. As for 
Germaine she ought to have felt greatly hon- 
ored to have been the object of so pretty a 
diplomatic transaction. She was treated like a 
princess ; that is to say, her opinion was never 
asked. And so she became la baromie de 
Stael oxv\h^ 14th of January, 1786. ** All the 
world," wrote Catherine the Great, who took 
notice of everything that was going on, " de- 
clares that the daughter of M. Necker is 
making a very bad match, and that they are 
not marrying her well." 

Everything had heretofore contributed to 
develop Germaine's ideal of love in marriage ; 
but her marriage, which united so many con- 
ventionalities, excluded that entirely. This 
was the origin of the storms and catastrophes 
of her life. 

*' It is from marriage," says Delphine, " that all a 
woman's affections should be derived ; and if the 
marriage is unhappy, what a confusion will follow in 
ideas, in duties, and even in characteristics ! These 
characteristics should have made you more worthy of 
the object of your choice ; but they may deprave the 
heart that is denied all those joys, for who can then 
be certain of her conduct? You, Madame, because 

3 



34 Madame de Stdel. 

you no longer believe in love ; but I, who am still 
captive to its charm, — where is the madman who 
would care for me, would care for an enthusiastic 
soul which he could not make captive? ... A 
woman's fate is at an end when she does not marry 
the one she loves; society has left but one hope in 
woman's destiny ; when the die is cast and one has 
lost, all is over." 

Madame de Stael had made trial of her life 
and passed judgment upon it when she wrote 
these lines. She was but twenty-two years of 
age, and her marriage was still very recent, 
when she inserted this significant passage 
into one of the *' Letters on Jean Jacques 
Rousseau " : " One is virtuous when one loves 
what one ought to love ; involuntarily one does 
what duty commands; . . . this abandon^ 
ment of self, this contempt of all that vanity 
would have us seek, prepares the soul for 
virtue." 

She was not at all happy at heart ; but this 
we know rather than perceive during the 
years between 1786 and 1789, though she was 
by turns melancholy and excited like the 
heroines of romance. At the beginning she 
was much diverted with society, and the 
glamour of her own youth. She was received 
at Versailles ; she held a salon at the Swedish 
embassy, rue du Bac, which eclipsed that of 



First Appearance before the World. 35 

Madame Necker; she wrote lively letters to 
Gustavus III. about Parisian society, and paid 
this prince, who was very proud of his own 
abilities, the court which would best flatter 
him. She became the delight of that charm- 
ing society of which one of its most ardent 
admirers, the young Abb6 de Perigord, wrote 
somewhat later : " He who did not live in those 
years knows nothing of the pleasure of living." 
The world believed itself rejuvenated ; it was 
merely intoxicated by itself. It finished like a 
banquet whose tapers are extinguished before 
the open windows by the refreshing air of 
a beautiful summer dawn. Germaine de Stael 
retained an ineffaceable impression of it: 
"There was never so much spirit and life 
anywhere else." Her whole soul went forth in 
hopes, and the hopes were dissipated in dis- 
course. Only to talk well was to have genius, 
and never did any one talk with a sincerer 
illusion of enthusiasm. 

"They thought in order to talk, and they 
talked in order to be applauded." It was the 
reign of the salons, the reign of conversation, 
the reign of women. Germaine de Stael is 
queen, — queen at Paris of the France which 
is to come, as Marie Antoinette is queen at 
Versailles of the France that is to disappear. 
Her eloquence burst forth, and her friends felt 



36 Madame de StdeL 

the first enchantment of that marvellous im- 
provisation which made Sismondi say after her 
voice was hushed, " Life for me is like a ball 
when the music has stopped." 

She excited envy in some, and scarcely had 
she become celebrated when the world began 
to calumniate her. The malignity of her ri- 
vals in intellect joined forces with the hatred 
of her father's political adversaries. As the 
daughter of Necker and the muse of the state 
reformers, she roused against her all those 
who at the court and in Paris held on to 
the old abuses, and prided themselves on loyalty 
to the absolute monarchy. Add to this her 
own imprudence in speech, which she never 
preconsidered, being incapable of restraining. 
a clever word or a piquant remark; her in- 
consistencies of conduct and her contempt of 
etiquette; her too decided preferences and 
her still less concealed coldness and disdain. 
She did not measure results, intending no 
more malice in her witticisms than hatred in 
her spontaneous dislikes; pursuing without 
transition, in society, in politics, and very soon 
in the Revolution, her role of the precocious 
and spoiled child, playing with fire, playing 
with monsters, never imagining that they 
could harm and that she in return could be 
scorched by the fire and torn by the claws. 



First Appearance before the World, 37 

*' She frightened the women," Madame de 
Remusat, who did not Hke her, said later; 
"• she offended scores of men to whom she 
thought herself superior." Among these was 
Rivarol, who was jealous and abusive; and 
Senac de Meilhan who published this perfidi- 
ous portrait, to which he gave the name of 
Hortense : '' An intoxication of talents has 
overpowered her, and she has made enthusi- 
asm a habit. . . . Her manners are so vehement 
that one is stunned; her conversation seems 
an assault; she is rather an unusual than an 
amiable woman; but whoever is beloved by 
her will find in Hortense a unique woman, a 
treasure of thought and sentiment." The 
world was pitiless to Marie Antoinette ; it was 
cruel to Madame de Stael. She suffered 
keenly. '' I know," she wrote, " of but one 
kind of severity formidable to sensitive souls : 
it is that of society people." ''To fight 
against opinion in the midst of society," said 
Delphine, ''is the greatest punishment that 
I can imagine." 

Yet there she lived amid this malicious and 
hostile society exposed to all the deceits and 
sophisms of the passions. There was nothing 
to protect her from it. A vague deism, the 
ashes of a religion ruined by the sarcasm of 
the philosophers ; a romantic morality inclin- 



38 Madame de StdeL 

ing to all the casuistry of sentiment; a cold 
and unattractive marriage, — these were a frail 
defence against the assault of a corrupt and 
furious world ; a world of Epicureans of riotous 
imaginations, who lived in libertinage and 
chafed at virtue, who discoursed upon natural 
right and translated it to mean intrigue, who 
declaimed like Jean Jacques' heroes, disturbed 
the peace like those of the younger Crebillon, 
and presumed to accomplish the renovation of 
the State by a political scheme derived from 
** Les Liaisons Dangereuses." 

Among the young leaders of this generation 
who held a rendezvous in her salon^ Madame 
de Stael selected three who were more nearly 
related to her than the rest in mind or heart. 
" The three men whom I most loved," she 
said afterward, ** whom I loved after the age 
of nineteen or twenty, were Narbonne, Talley- 
rand, and Mathieu de Montmorency." The 
last should be placed first and kept apart. He 
seems never to play any other part than that 
of confidant and consoler, but a confidant of 
most intimate nature and a specially elected 
consoler, — one with his friend in enthusiasm 
and in community of illusions, — the only one 
who never troubled her life, who never 
exercised any but a beneficent influence 
upon it, and who, without captivating her 



First Appearance before the World, 39 

mind as much as the others, had perhaps an 
intellect that surpassed her genius. Mathieu, 
in spite of some inconsistencies, was at heart a 
good man and sincerely virtuous. The other 
two were complete roues, Talleyrand, under 
greater limitations as Abbe de Perigord, was 
already quite secularized in mind and man- 
ners, — not yet the classic Talleyrand of coun- 
cils and congresses, wrinkled, old, tired of 
everything yet satisfied with nothing, but 
Talleyrand in his thirtieth year, young-look- 
ing, much sought after, elegant in figure, more 
a rogue than a sceptic, a sort of Gondi, more 
impregnated with Laclos than with Saint- 
Evremond, and who called himself Cherubin 
when he was at the seminary. Narbonne 
was a grand seigneur^ a great charmer hav- 
ing the bearing and reputation of a states- 
man, inexhaustible in ideas and projects, 
animated and epigrammatic, the most daz- 
zling of talkers, superior to Rivarol, — perhaps 
because he talked like a gentleman who gives 
his mind freely, and not like a professional; a 
man of the world and of the court, imposing 
to the men, irresistible to the women, with the 
double prestige of a romantic history in his 
past and triumphant prophecies for his future. 
Guibert died just then, at the right time, 
adroit as ever in managing his reputation as 



40 Madame de Stdel. 

a great man and a happy one. Madame de 
Stael wrote a eulogy of the hero in the fune- 
real and emphatic manner of one of her mas- 
ters, Thomas : " It was an oak overthrown by 
the winds; it was Nature abandoning one of 
her most noble works." She saw him resus- 
citated, rejuvenated, and more ideal, if pos- 
sible, in Narbonne. She was dazzled. 

The Revolution suddenly turned all of 
Madame de Stael's best faculties toward pub- 
lic affairs, and seemed to open to her a new 
destiny as a political woman. She put on the 
mask, though she had not the character. 
While she was the inspirer of a great party 
which beheved itself master of France, namely, 
the Constitutionals, she remained still mistress 
of her house, and a woman passionately long- 
ing for happiness amid the general crash of 
things about her. She could manage politics 
only from her salon ; she imagined, however, 
for a moment that she could make that the 
State itself. But it was never anything more 
than a political boudoir, — a brilliant and voice- 
ful boudoir, but a boudoir still. The Revolu- 
tion surged round about it, isolated it, and then 
submerged it. It could not be otherwise. 

The crisis they were entering upon was not 
one of intellect, of eloquence, and of intrigue : it 
was an affair of the State, the most formidable 



First Appearance before the World, 4 1 

ever seen ; and there was need, not for the vain 
Pompeys and Ciceros for whom Madame de 
Stael professed idolatry, but for the Scyllas 
and Csesars for whom she felt a horror. She 
was too much interested in too many ideas 
and too many persons ; she loved too well to 
please, to admire, to console, and to worship ; 
she had too much justice of conscience, too 
much pity of heart, too much delicacy of soul ; 
she could inspire her contemporaries, but she 
was not capable of leading men, of laying bare 
their weaknesses, or of employing their vices. 
She formed no plans which she would not 
instantly have broken for the sake of a friend. 
To shirk suffering seemed to her the last gasp of 
human activity. State reason seemed to her a 
blasphemy. Even the word '' State " had for her 
a significance of harshness and tyranny against 
which she rebelled. It scarcely appears at all 
in her writings. The Government does not 
appear in them save as a theatrical assembly. 
She loved only liberty. Animated by a virile 
genius, she was yet too entirely a woman, 
by reason of her weaknesses and goodness of 
heart, to be politic. Politics could only be in 
her life a pain and deception the more. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Revolution. — "Reflections upon the 
Peace." — The "Essay on Fiction." 

1789-1795. 

HER day came during the Revolution, — a 
day all her own, the memory of which 
appears in her writings as radiant as that of 
the first Federation in the national chronicles. 
It was the day of Necker's triumphant return 
after the 14th of July, 1789. She accompanied 
her father ; she followed him amid the excited 
people; she was herself wildly excited. " M. 
Necker advanced to the balcony [of the Hotel 
de Ville], and proclaimed in a loud voice the 
blessed words of peace between Frenchmen of 
all parties, while the whole multitude shouted 
with delight. I saw nothing more at that 
moment, for I swooned with joy." " Ah, 
what an intoxicating joy is popularity ! " 
Necker at the Hotel de Ville, Corinne at the 
Capitol, — it is under this theatrical aspect, in 
the apotheosis of a final act, when the curtain 
falls amid applause, that Madame de Stael 
always dreamed of glory. She would gladly 
have paused long at this day, — " the last day 



The Revolution . 43 

of prosperity In my life ! ... No man ever en- 
joyed to such a degree the affection of the 
people. Alas ! it was I, above all, who en- 
joyed it for his sake ; it was I whom it intox- 
icated ; it is I who ought not to be ungrateful 
for these joys." Ungrateful she certainly never 
was. But these joys, which took her heart 
and her enthusiasm by surprise, were in her life 
only as periods of clear weather between 
storms. She soon realized this; the second 
disgrace of Necker, his fall, this time irretriev- 
able, his unpopularity, the oblivion to which 
he retired (worse than the fall itself), the 
quarrels between Stael and his king, which 
compromised the very existence of the em- 
bassy, — in fine, all the side issues of the 
crisis, so lightly met, too soon turned to 
dramatic reality. 

Madame de Stael was one of the most 
prominent persons in Paris. She eclipsed the 
queen; she suffered the same reverses. Her 
enemies treated her in their libels and ga- 
zettes as the enemies of Marie Antoinette 
had treated her, and they tore her to pieces. 
They represented her as living amid intrigue 
and libertinism. ** She is the Bacchante of the 
Revolution, ... the only person in France 
who could deceive her sex," say '' Les Actes des 
Apotres." Rivarol dedicated to her his " Petit 



44 Madame de StdeL 

Almanach des Grands Hommes," — ^' Madame, 
to publish a dictionary of the great men of the 
day is to offer you the list of your adorers." 
Just as Hebert, Marat, and Fouquier-Tinville 
when they wished to insult Marie Antoinette 
had only to rummage through the secret 
libraries of Versailles, the police of the Direc- 
tory and of Napoleon could find in the Royalist 
pamphlets the repertory of the abuses which 
they heaped for twenty years upon Madame 
de Stael. 

She aimed to govern the State from her 
salon. The opinions held in this salo7t were 
treated as affairs of State, as well as the cabals 
which had their rise there, and even the bons- 
mots which circulated thence. This salon was 
Madame de Stael's glory; this glory was the 
source of all her annoyances, griefs, and per- 
secutions. She endeavored to soothe and to 
conciliate. She made the " cleverest men of op- 
posite opinions dine together . . . they always 
understand one another on a certain plane." 
The parties do not stay very long on this plane, 
however. The spirit of faction ruins the spirit of 
politeness. Men have only to take one another 
seriously to beget aversion for one another. 
They formed parties, and each excluded the 
other. Madame de Stael, whether she would 
or no, had her own party, or rather her circle. 



The Revolution, 45 

She was pushed into it, rather than entered it 
voluntarily. She had some friends who already 
no longer thought as she did. She admired 
Lafayette for his chivalrous spirit; she gladly 
praised Sieyes as a political emulator of New- 
ton, '' the mysterious oracle of the events that 
were in preparation ; " she loved Narbonne, 
who had no liking for Necker's systems, was 
refractory to the Declaration of Rights, and in 
his views of reform went no farther than a sort 
of aristocratic liberty a la Voltaire rather than 
a la Montesquieu. Her preferences were with 
the group which had Lally on the right and 
Talleyrand on the left, and which included 
beside bourgeois like Mounier and Malouet, 
gentlemen like Mathieu de Montmorency, 
Clermont-Tonnerre, Crillon, La Rochefoucauld, 
Toulongeon, and the Prince de Broglie, declared 
partisans of the English Constitution and a 
mucleus ready to hand for a chamber of peers. 
They believed it possible to import this Con- 
stitution to France. Doubtless the king had 
nothing to do with it ; but the history of the 
English offered a salutary expedient. 

** It was," affirms Madame de Stael, "■ an idea 
generally established in the minds of states- 
men, that a deviation from heredity might be 
favorable to the establishment of liberty, by 
placing at the head of the Constitution a king 



46 Madame de StdeL 

who owed his throne to it, instead of a king 
who would think himself despoiled by it." 
Several of Madame de Stael's most intimate 
friends, although much divided among them- 
selves, openly thought and expressed the 
same, — Narbonne, who supported the Empire ; 
Sieyes, who brought about the Consulate ; 
Talleyrand, who made, unmade, and remade 
every regime during half a century. They 
had not then given a thought to the Duke of 
Orleans, — he was as yet a mere subaltern in the 
Revolution ; they considered him as '* without 
bridle and without force," — but they did think 
of his son, who gave promise of a political 
turn of mind and a valorous heart. In case 
of need they would have had recourse to. 
strangers, — to Brunswick, Henry of Prussia, or 
a Spanish Bourbon. Madame de Stael persisted 
in her views, in common with Bernadotte, 
until 1 81 3. Talleyrand, the only survivor of 
that group, saw its secret wish fulfilled in 1 830; 
but none of these men, in the years between 
1790 and 1791, had any presentiment of the 
Caesar that France was hatching, whom the 
Revolution would raise up and whom the most 
of them would have to serve. 

Madame de Stael suspected it least of all. In 
her judgment upon the Revolution there is a 
fundamental misconception, — the entire source. 



The Revolution. 47 

so far as she is concerned, of errors of con- 
duct, disappointments, and sorrows. Of the two 
essential objects of the Revolution, — liberty, 
civil and political, and reform of society and 
the State, — only the second appealed to her, 
while the first, on the contrary, inflamed the 
great mass of the French people. They struck 
at what was most pressing and necessary, — 
the abolition of the seignorial regime, personal 
liberty, liberty of possessions, and equality. 
They gave little anxiety to the guaranty of 
these rights by political institutions. Madame 
de Stael and her friends put, if it were possi- 
ble, the guaranty above the object guaranteed, 
the political constitution above the civil laws. 
They made the mistake of attributing to the 
whole nation the wish of an enlightened 
portion of French society. 

The main current {allure principal) of the 
Revolution escaped them; and therefore it is 
that this party, distinguished as it was, never 
came into power. They did not understand 
that France, once her own mistress, would 
become a democracy according to her instincts, 
the drift of her past, and the education she 
owed to her kings. The Roman liberty of the 
conventions, the civil liberty of the consulate, 
the obedience of the people to the Comite de 
Salut Public, the popularity of Bonaparte and 



48 Madame de StdeL 

his omnipotence, were to the very last inex- 
pHcable to these noble and ingenious thinkers. 
They followed the development of their own 
abstract ideas, while round about them France 
ran the course marked out for her in history. 

Madame de Stael is credited with these 
words on Mirabeau : " That man who often de- 
fied public opinion, but always sustained the 
general opinion," — profound words ; but only 
a witticism, even if they are authentic. At the 
beginning of the Revolution Mirabeau was as 
inscrutable to her as Bonaparte was at the end 
of it. She always judged Mirabeau as was 
natural to the daughter of Necker, the Catiline 
of that misunderstood Cicero. She admits that 
he '* knew everything and foresaw everything; " 
but the final impression which she retains and 
which she gives of him, is that he is an outcast 
ready "to set fire to the whole social edifice, in 
order to force open to himself the doors of the 
salons of Paris . . . only caring to use his 
thunderous eloquence for the sake of getting 
himself into the front rank, whence his own 
immorality had banished him." She judges 
Mirabeau as Madame Roland judges Danton, 
but with less narrowness and partiality, because 
hers was the mind of the historian and ignored 
the spirit of faction. She makes him a politi- 
cal monster, hideous, cynical, hedged in with 



The Revolution, 49 

statecraft. She suspects that he may become 
what she dreads most of anything in the world, 
— a possible successor to Richelieu. 

The chiefs of the democracy are merely 
schemers in her eyes ; democracy itself, which 
forces its way and oversteps the bounds al- 
ready, seems to her *' an impossibility in 
France." The national character of the event 
strikes her no more than the social character 
of the Revolution. The spirit of proselytism, 
of humanitarian propagandism, the spirit of 
extension and conquest, so Gallic and so 
Roman, are to her as deviations from the 
abstract notions of 1789. She is full of illu- 
sions about the " enlightened princes " who 
govern Europe; they would never think, 
she declares, of menacing the liberties of 
France or of coveting her territory. The 
point of departure of the war of 1792 is en- 
veloped in confusion to her eyes. All that 
followed after, the great French epopee, is 
veiled to her imagination as to her heart. She 
loves not war ; she fears the prestige and the 
usurpations of the sword ; her ideas of military 
glory were those of a cosmopolitan Genevese 
and a European philosopher. Still, she would 
not have strangers interfering in the inter- 
nal affairs of France; the moment that they 
attempt it her patriotism is aroused; she 
4 



50 Madame de StdeL 

believes that the whole nation should unite 
against them. 

" In the political questions which now divide 
France, where lies the truth, will you say to me? 
Is it not a man's most sacred duty never to appeal 
to foreign arms against his country ? Is not national 
independence the first good, seeing that degradation 
is the only irreparable ill ? " 

These are Narbonne's views. " No minis- 
ter yet," wrote Marie Antoinette on Nov. 
7, 1 79 1. '' Madame de Stael is working 
hard for M. de Narbonne. I never saw a 
stronger and more involved intrigue." And 
on December 7 : *' Comte Louis de Narbonne 
is at last Minister of War, since yesterday, 
What glory for Madame de Stael, and what 
a pleasure for her to have the whole army 
... on her side ! " Madame de Stael had 
triumphed indeed. All the eloquence of Nar- 
bonne's speeches and reports was attributed 
to her. The fact is that this brilliant speech- 
maker was too lazy to write. She enjoyed 
the spectacle of important affairs, and cabals 
amused her. In her salon, at two solemn con- 
ferences of the Assembly, the missions of Cus- 
tine to Brunswick and of Segur to Berlin were 
arranged. The diplomacy of the past could 
show no more entangled intrigues. No one 



The Revolutio7i. 51 

need be surprised to see even Clio stoop to 
employ her genius in them. These great peo- 
ple went from intrigue to political corruption 
as easily as from love to gallantry; they 
thought it sufficient to be formal and mind 
appearances. The appearances, however, were 
not very carefully guarded in the Berlin affair, 
and it made much scandal ; but Narbonne had 
no time to spend on it. 

This minister's disgrace turned Madame de 
Stael to her true vocation in the Revolution as 
a member of the victim's party. This brought 
into play her best quality, — her generosity. 
She risked for it her peace, her liberty, and 
at one time even her life. She was prodigal 
of her efforts and her fortune for its sake ; 
she gave herself up to it without reserve and 
without regret; she practically forgot inju- 
ries without counting upon reward. The mali- 
cious world gladly weighed the weaknesses of 
her character against the eloquence of her 
words. It is but just to allow that, eloquently 
as she could talk of greatness of soul, her ex- 
ample surpassed her words, and the list of her 
debtors exceeds by a large number the ironi- 
cal litany of her adorers composed by Rivarol. 
She tried to save the queen ; she did save 
Narbonne. She left Paris at the last hour, on 
September 29, and took refuge at Coppet, 



52 Mada77te de StdeL 

which became from that time an asylum for 
the exiles. 

There she did much good, but she found 
no repose. Madame Necker was seriously ill, 
and care for her health absorbed her husband. 
Madame de Stael found herself, in the " infer- 
nal peace" of solitude, thrown upon herself, — 
that is, given over to ennui, horrible ennui, as 
she says. Nature had no consolation for her: 
" I have a magnificent horror of the whole of 
Switzerland," she wrote. She saw her youth 
lost, her happiness ruined, her hopes with- 
ered. " Sorrow pursued me," said Delphine; 
" I fled before it." She fled to England. 
There she joined her friends, — Narbonne, 
Talleyrand, Montmorency, Lally, Jancourt, 
Malouet. But among them, in the French 
colony of refugees, she found again, embit- 
tered by misery and exile, all the heart-burn- 
ings of Paris. 

In spite of her inexhaustible benevolence, 
the royalists continued to snarl at her. The 
extreme liberty of her speech, the careless- 
ness of her manners, her familiar ways with 
her friends, their incorrigible indiscretion and 
intriguing spirit aggravated by their forced 
idleness, gave only too much ground to scan- 
dal-mongers. Lacking other refuge, the Old 
World in its drowning condition took refuge 



The Revolution. 53 

in intolerance. The pell-mell of European 
society soon drew itself together. There was 
a general sifting. If Madame du Barry still 
was held in some consideration by the beau 
monde of the refugees, it was because she 
had been in favor with the Most Christian 
King. This indirect orthodoxy stood her in 
place of other virtues. Madame de Stael took 
the wrong view in the matter of having two 
chambers ; she was irremediably compromised 
in the eyes of the royalists and their friends 
in England. They let her feel this to her 
mortification. 

It would seem that Narbonne reproached 
her with the openness of her attachment for 
him and the criticism she incurred by her im- 
prudences. He was subjected to a sort of 
ridicule which persons of his nature ill endure. 
The passion which he inspired in Madame 
de Stael was to him only an episode in his 
career of success ; he now desired to pass on 
to the next chapter. Madame de Stael was 
always sincere in her attachments ; she saw 
that she had been deceived, and she thought 
that she had never before tasted sorrow. It 
was hard for her to give up. ''This dim ray 
of light," she says in her treatise on " The Pas- 
sions," *' strikes the reason before setting the 
heart free." This crisis left deep traces in 



54 Madame de St del. 

her writings. She had learned from a man 
upon whom she had lavished all her fond 
hopes, that " what we call reason is the dis- 
enchantment of life." She was at that time 
between twenty-five and twenty-six years of 
age, — the age of Delphine, the age of Co- 
rinne, the prophetic age for women, — *' the 
epoch of misfortune laid down in the career 
of every passion. . . . At this epoch, when life 
ceases to grow, there is no future in your des- 
tiny ; in many respects your fate is fixed, and 
men consider then whether it is worth their 
while to unite their fate with yours. If they 
see in it fewer advantages than they had an- 
ticipated, if by some means their expectations 
are deceived, they will, at the moment of sep- 
aration from you, blame you in their hearts 
for their disappointments; they look for a 
thousand faults in you to absolve themselves 
from the greatest fault of all." She knew by 
sad experience that in the world as it exists, 
*' men may seem to be good, and yet have 
caused women the most terrible suffering 
which it is possible for a mortal being to 
produce in the soul of another; they may 
seem to be true, and yet have deceived them ; 
they may have received from a woman such 
services, such marks of devotion, as should 
bind two friends together, . . . and yet cut 



The Revolution, 55 

loose from it all by attributing it all to love, — 
as though one sentiment, one gift the more, 
diminished the price of all the others." 

She did not break her connection with Nar- 
bonne ; she had a horror of that. In affairs of 
the heart, it was the feeling of emptiness that 
made her faint, the feeling of irreparable- 
ness that her imagination could not endure: 
"Never! Never! Word of iron and of fire I 
The tortures invented in the sufferer's dreams, 
the ever-revolving wheel, the water that re- 
cedes just as one draws near, the stones that 
fall as fast as they are carried up, are but 
weak expressions of that terrible thought, — 
the impossible and the irreparable. . . . What ! 
my happiness torn from me, not by necessity, 
not by chance, but by a voluntary action, by 
an irreparable action ! Lives there any that 
can bear that word irreparable ? For myself, I 
believe it sprung from the infernal regions." 

Friendship was to her but a derivation of 
love, whose language it borrowed. " Never," 
she says, '* has there existed a person who 
carried farther than I the religion of friend- 
ship." She was always very reserved concern- 
ing the affair with Narbonne. Nevertheless 
there are a few significant rumors still afloat. 
" M. de Narbonne behaved very ill toward 
her, as successful men too often do," said 



56 Madame de StdeL 

Madame Recamier, who knew all of Madame 
de Stael's secrets. Madame de Stael herself, 
in 1802, said: *' Narbonne is a person of 
much grace; " and then in 1807 the following 
in reference to the Prince de Ligne, and it 
tells the whole story : " He has the manners 
of M. de Narbonne, and a heartr 

In spite of all this she found herself com- 
paratively happy in England. At parting she 
thanked this land for four months of happi- 
ness which escaped the general shipwreck of 
life. She went about considerably, and took 
a bird's-eye view of society; saw some of 
Shakspeare's plays, glanced at English litera- 
ture, and renewed her admiration of parlia- 
mentary institutions. She heard Pitt, who 
made a great impression on her; and Fox, 
who inspired her with admiration. She took 
notes for a future volume of '' Considerations," 
and made observations especially for one then 
in hand on '' The Passions." She wrote some 
chapters of this, and Talleyrand amused him- 
self by correcting the style. 

At Coppet, the last of May, 1793, she met 
again M. de Stael. The ambassador had 
left Paris in the month of February, 1792, re- 
called by the King of Sweden. He returned 
there by the command of the regent in Feb- 
ruary, 1793 ; the Revolution of the 2d of June 



The Revolution. 57 

forced him again to leave. He remained at 
Coppet until the close of the year, crossing 
and recrossing his wife's course in life accord- 
ing to the events of his politics. Joseph de 
Maistre was then in Switzerland. He met the 
Neckers at the house of some friends of both. 
Madame de Stael and he talked about every- 
thing, and understood each other upon nothing 
whatever. She was to him a living abomina- 
tion, — ''science in petticoats ! " ''I never knew 
a head so completely perverted," he wrote. 
*' Not having studied together either theology 
or politics, we have had scenes to make one 
expire with laughter, and yet without quarrel- 
ling in the least." 

Madame de Stael was not able to save Marie 
Antoinette. She attempted to move her judges 
to pity, and wrote her '' Reflections upon the 
Trial of the Queen." It was an appeal to women. 
The most heroic could then do nothing but kill 
like Charlotte Corday, or be killed like Madame 
Roland. The Terror literally crushed Madame 
de Stael. All effort became impossible to her. 
She gave herself up to reflections, and devoured 
her grief Her books overflow with the ex- 
pression of her feehngs. She was too direct 
and too clear-sighted not to be wholly true to 
them: *'To wake without hope, to bear every 
minute of the long day like a heavy burden, 



58 Madame de StdeL 

to find no more interest or life in any of the 
habitual occupations, to regard Nature without 
pleasure, the future without plan . . ." 

Madame Necker died in the month of May, 
1794. Necker was one of those good souls 
who forget their own griefs only in consoling 
those of others. He devoted himself to his 
daughter. He taught her to occupy herself 
with her children, — she had two sons, — and 
their education began to fill in a measure her 
aimless days. What Necker was to her she 
has told everywhere and in every way. She 
has perhaps nowhere better expressed it than 
in this passage from *' Delphine," — 

" You have heard of the intelligence and rare tal- 
ents of my father, but no one could ever describe 
to you the incredible union in him of perfect reason 
and deep sensibility, which makes him the safest of 
guides and the best of friends. ' He takes away 
from my mind everything that troubles it; he has 
studied the human heart in order the better to succor 
it in distress. . . . The heart has need of some mar- 
vellous idea to calm it and rescue it from numberless 
doubts and terrors born of the imagination; I find 
this necessary repose in the conviction that my father 
brings happiness to my lot." 

As a mother she proved as atteritive as she 
was devoted as a dausrhter and admirable as 



The Revolution, 59 

a friend; but it was not her destiny to be 
absorbed in her family, or to be lulled by sim- 
ple affections. There was no idea so marvel- 
lous that it could appease her insatiable thirst 
for illusion, and protect her heart against sur- 
prise. The trial through which she had just 
passed had cured her of the glamour, but she 
was still defenceless against the most blinding 
of all illusions, — admiration of one's misunder- 
stood genius, and pity of one's misfortunes. She 
had experienced the deception of brilliant pas- 
sions born in times of prosperity ; she was about 
to expose herself to the sadder deception of 
a tragic passion conceived amid life's storms. 
'' It is not," says Corinne, " the first love which 
is ineffaceable, it merely springs at the need of 
loving ; but when after having known life, and 
when in the fulness of one's judgment one meets 
the soul and spirit for which until then one has 
sought in vain, the imagination is subdued by 
the reality, and one has reason to be unhappy." 
It was at such a time, to the sorrow of her life, 
that Madame de Stael met Benjamin Constant. 
He was then twenty-seven years of age. He 
had led the life of an adventurer of passion all 
over Europe. We see him wandering in Ger- 
many and Bohemia, sojourning in England, 
and filling the role of chamberlain in Bruns- 
wick. He has met in Switzerland a rival of 



6o Madame de StdeL 

Madame de Warens, whom he quickly converts 
into a confidant ; and in Germany he marries a 
person of doubtful character, from whom he 
separates with more motives than he had for 
marrying her. A libertine, with a theatrical 
sort of excitability, dissipated, a gambler, and a 
duellist, he says of himself: '' I have lived a 
very unsettled and, I will say, a very miserable 
life, filling those around me with wonder at my 
precocious talents and distrust of my violent, 
quarrelsome, and malicious character." He 
had marvellous faculties for grasping every 
subject, and a mind well able to clothe each 
one in sparkling and glowing imagery ; he was 
insinuating, persuasive, keen, sarcastic, ironi- 
cal; he observed and learned everything, in 
spite of his general debauchery of life and 
thought. He unfolded and displayed a genius 
capable of handling the universe, but he dis- 
played it to every chance wind and let it float 
with every caprice. Incapable of concentration 
save momentarily and as though unintention- 
ally; greedy for a glory that had no object; 
devoured by an aimless activity; full of cross- 
purposes and surprises ; wedded to the world 
by his love of gambling, gallantries, and the 
vanity of his success in the salons ; yet in the 
midst of all this filled with a longing for soli- 
tude. He was ambitious for conquests, but 



The Revolution, 6i 

impatient of bonds; he made a great pretence 
of enthusiasm, and especially of his ability to 
inspire it in others, but continually wasted his 
powers in fruitless analyses ; he conceived 
plans which vanished on the instant, and he is 
inconsistent in every act of his life. He burns 
to obtain his independence, and yet knows not 
what to do with it ; he ascribes everything to 
himself, yet is interested in nothing. " If I 
knew what I want," he says, " I should know 
better what I am doing." He purposed to be a 
man much beloved, and he was loved by the 
most extraordinary woman of her times ; to be 
a statesman, and he was twice called to the 
councils of the most powerful ruler of the age; 
to be an illustrious thinker, and he made a 
mark in all the great debates of his day. And 
yet hfs work is but second-rate, and his life 
was but a series of abortive efforts. It was be- 
cause in love he lacked sincerity ; in politics, 
character ; and in thought, continuity. He 
has left but one book, a novel of a few pages : 
it is in its way a masterpiece ; but it is a con- 
fession of the impotence of the author to act, 
to do well, — to live at all, in fact. 

At this time he was still young, and had not 
yet begun to draw a warning from his own 
faults. He seemed given to ideals, dreaming 
of the inaccessible, the unknown, the incom- 



62 Madame de StdeL 

prehensible, appearing to bear upon him the 
burden of his times and the mystery of a future 
redemption. Otherwise, in figure more than 
in talents, he was the opposite of Guibert or 
Narbonne ; " a tall, straight man," says a con- 
temporary, ''well formed, blond, a little pale, 
with long silky hair curling about his ears and 
neck." The air of having just returned from 
Germany was then the supreme elegance of 
poetry ; but this Werther, with the candid brow 
wore also the sarcastic smile of the exquisite 
of the old regime ; his eyes, generally hidden 
by glasses, sparkled in disputation; his speech, 
a little shrill, gave to his epigrams the keenness 
of a whistling arrow. 

He charmed Madame de Stael with his wit, 
touched her pity with his troubles, and inter- 
ested her with his ideas. He admired her. 
" She is a creature apart," he wrote, " a supe- 
rior being such as one meets only once in an 
age." She was an ambassadress, and already a 
woman of fame. He found her '' fighting her 
destiny. . . . Qne watches her with curiosity, 
like a beautiful storm." He was himself '' at a 
period when his heart craved love, his vanity 
success." He set himself to the game, and 
seemed violently smitten. Madame de Stael 
cared little for him at first, says Madame 
Recamier ; '' but he made out such despair, and 



The Revolution, 63 

threatened so often to kill himself, that he at 
last triumphed over her." She allowed herself 
to be overcome by a tumultuous passion which 
upset her whole life. She could never free 
herself from it. 

Flattered as he was, Benjamin had no sooner 
enchained Madame de Stael to his Hfe than 
the chain galled him. He was jealous of his 
independence, and still more so of his intel- 
lectual prestige. Madame de Stael loved him 
too despotically, and ruled him with too high a 
hand. Hers was the virile and superior soul ; 
he was full of caprice, of nerves, a fragile and 
feminine soul. He felt it, took advantage of it, 
affecting lassitude, and threatening to break off 
their connection. She was jealous, she burst 
into tears ; he left her, bitter and triumphant. 
Scarcely outside, he reproached himself with 
his cruelty. Life seemed dismal; he returned, 
consoled his friend, and was tender toward her. 
As soon as he saw her appeased, he was angry 
at his own weakness, and even before he was 
forgiven he was in haste to get away. This 
state of things set in at the very beginning of 
their relations, and these storms lasted for 
years. They wounded and healed each other 
perpetually. They were held together by the 
mind rather than by the heart. Each made 
the other shine by emulation, and each fanned 



64 Madame de Stdel. 

in the other the flame that was to them the 
very ardor of Hfe. " Their tastes," says Co- 
rinne, ''were not at all the same, their opinions 
rarely accorded, and yet in the depths of 
their souls there were nevertheless kindred 
mysteries." 

They became acquainted in the month of 
September, 1794. Current events contributed 
to their infatuation, in seeming to open to them 
a common career of political activity. The 
9th Thermidor brought hope to Madame de 
Stael. She was too hungry for it not to ac- 
cept it with open hands. She had too much 
judgment in affairs to persist obstinately in her 
own notions. She sought for the possible, and 
devoted herself to it. In 1791 she was a mon- 
archist, with Narbonne as constable of the con- 
stitutional monarchy; the year III would find 
her a republican, with Benjamin Constant as a 
legislator of the liberal republic. Talleyrand 
had gone from England to America; she in 
her own way undertook the same voyage. It 
seemed to her that the first essential for the es- 
tablishment of liberty was the re-establishment 
of peace. Europe must give it; France must 
accept it. Europe must renounce the idea of 
dismembering France on pretext of ancient 
rights or present guaranties ; and France must 
cease to invade her neighbors and to conquer 



''Reflections upon the Peace'.' 65 

their territories on pretext of converting their 
people to equality. Otherwise neither the war 
nor the revolutionary directory which was the 
consequence of it would ever come to an end. 
M. de Stael sustained his wife in this sentiment. 
He returned to Coppet in the autumn of 1794. 
He desired peace, because he was humane and 
judicious; he endeavored to procure it be- 
tween the Republic and Sweden, because he 
was, before all, a diplomat, and because Paris, 
in spite of the Revolution, seemed to him the 
most important post. 

Madame de Stael was at her greatest fervor 
of admiration for England, its parliament, its 
prime minister, and the noble enterprise for the 
restoration of order in Europe which she at- 
tributed to them. They were the soul of the 
coalition. " M. Pitt and France, a nation and 
a man, — these are what it is most important to 
persuade," she said to herself. This was the 
object of a work which she published in Swit- 
zerland at the close of 1794, *^ Reflections 
concerning the Peace, addressed to M. Pitt and 
to the French People." In this Madame de 
Stael reveals herself as a political writer, but 
she is still an imitator. Her article is a sort of 
amplification of Mallet du Pan, whose writings 
she much admired. Otherwise her views are 
strong, political, and, finally, historical. 
5 



66 Madame de St del 

The Powers, she said, had dealt with the 
French people across the grain; they had 
endeavored to restore the Bourbon monarchy, 
to which France is either indifferent or hostile, 
and to re-establish the ancient regime^ which 
was odious to her; they had threatened to 
treat all Frenchmen hke bandits ; they listened 
to the exiles, and refused to make use of them, 
"■ instead of keeping them without believing in 
them." These exiles endeavored to " return to 
the prejudices of the fourteenth century . . . 
they would have nothing left of a revolution 
which has stirred all the passions of mankind ; " 
they see only the plots of intriguers in what 
the movement of the whole people has accom- 
plished. ''Never — in this revolution — have 
men been more than instruments of the domi- 
nant idea; the people regarded them as the 
means, not as the leaders." France will not 
yield either on the article of the ancient re- 
gime, or on the article of national independence. 
The interest of individuals, patriotism, pride of 
victory, enthusiasm for democratic ideas, all 
unite to interest the French in the success of 
the Republic. This is the resort of the Jaco- 
bins; war founded their reign, and sustains it. 
Do they wish peace? They must reassure the 
moderate party, which cannot prevail except by 
peace ; and through the peace they must gain 



''Reflections tip on the Peace!' 67 

France to the government of this party. France 
would accept peace if Europe would recognize 
the Republic and respect French territory. 
Let Europe beware. France no longer merely 
defends herself; she will invade. She is dis- 
posed to put a Hmit to her conquests; but " if 
the peace is not concluded this winter, it is 
impossible to predict at the centre of what 
empire the French will refuse it next year." 
So much for Pitt and his allies ; so much for 
the French. Peace means liberty, pity, jus- 
tice, and also policy. " France has no inter- 
est in warring against neighboring nations, and 
making them as belligerent as herself, by com- 
municating to them the same spirit." Madame 
de Stael rises very high just here ; she hurries 
the great reflux of the century. The Revolution 
in fact will return against France with greater 
fury, according as outside of France it takes 
on a more national and democratic character. 
Add to this the peril incurred from armies 
which will invade the Republic if they are not 
disbanded little by little, and if their impor- 
tance to the State is not diminished. Unlimited 
conquest is a delusion. " Frenchmen ! every- 
thing yields to you except the immutable 
nature of things which prevents you from 
founding a government under disorganizing 
principles." Cease to conquer; organize! 



68 Madame de St del. 

And you, Europeans, cease *' to dispute for 
the territory which the volcano threatens to 
ingulf! " 

Madame de Stael does not define any too 
clearly in this article the limits put by the 
*' immutable nature of things " to the conquest 
over the land *' which the volcano threatens to 
ingulf," and which Europe must abandon to 
the French. But she has explained it else- 
where with the utmost precision, and it is a 
feature of her thought which it is important 
henceforth to clear of all doubts. She pre- 
mises, as fundamental elements of a nation, the 
" difference in languages, the natural limits, 
the recollections of a common history." Com- 
munity of traditions, according to her, does 
away with difference of languages, and natural 
limits do away even with traditions. It is one 
of the " dominant ideas of the nineteenth cen- 
tury," she will say later. For France these 
limits are marked by the Pyrenees, the Alps, 
and the Rhine. "The eternal barrier of the 
Rhine separates the intellectual regions no less 
than the countries themselves." " That Rhine 
frontier is solemn; one dreads in passing it to 
hear oneself say those terrible words : You 
are outside of France ! " The Republic desires 
and ought to desire peace within these limits. 
There ** the strength of France is proportionate 



" Reflections upon the Peace'' 69 

to that of the other States of Europe." Beyond 
that France is out of bounds, and the Republic, 
once become aggressive, is vowed to a military- 
government. It is with this reserve thought, 
latent somehow in the " Reflections " of the 
year III, that one must read the work, and 
that one must interpret everything, conse- 
quently, that Madame de Stael wrote on the 
conditions of peace between France and Eu- 
rope, on the conquests of the Empire, on 
the independence of the people, and finally, 
on Germany. 

The "Reflections" of 1794 facilitated her 
return to Paris. She went there in May, 1795 ; 
there she met M. de Stael re-established in his 
position as ambassador. The hotel in the rue 
du Bac was reopened, and Madame de Stael 
endeavored to reassemble her salon with the 
remains of society still afloat in Paris. *' It 
was truly a strange spectacle. . . . One might 
see, every tenth day, all the elements of the 
old regime and the new, gathered together at 
these entertainments, but not reconciled. The 
elegant manners of the well-bred were appar- 
ent above the humble costume they still wore, 
as in the time of the Terror. The men con- 
verted from the Jacobin party entered for the 
first time the society of the fine world, and 
their pride was more sensitive regarding their 



70 Madame de St del 

afifectation of good manners than upon any 
other subject. The women of the old regime 
flocked around them to obtam places for their 
brothers, sons, and husbands ; and the gracious 
flattery which they knew how to make use of 
tickled these gross ears, and disposed the most 
bitter partisans to what we afterward beheld ; 
namely, the re-establishment of a court, with 
all the old abuses, each taking care, however, 
to lay the blame at the other's door." 

The most moderate of the revolutionaries — 
the former Constitutional party, or as we 
should say nowadays, the Liberals — Daunou, 
Cabanis, Lanjuinais, Tracy, Ginguene, Chenier, 
Boissy d'Anglas, Roederer, Barras (the last in 
a connection less friendly and more worldly), 
all Republicans whose confidence Madame de 
Stael sought to gain; the ghosts of the Mon- 
archy of 1 79 1 whom she endeavored to win 
over to the Republic ; the returned exiles, — 
*Svhom she was both pleased and sorry to 
receive," says one; writers who were taking 
up their presses and journals again, such as 
Dupont de Nemours, Morellet, Suard, the 
younger Lacretelle, and Adrien de Lezay, 
whose historical views pleased her, and whose 
singularly precocious ideas she later helped to 
settle into definitive judgments; round about 
these ''the diplomatic corps, which was at 



''Reflections tipon the Peace'' "ji 

the feet of the Comite du Salut Public while 
always conspiring against it; " and in the 
midst of these four or five different tribes, 
which elbowed each other and watched each 
other with jealous eyes, was Benjamin Con- 
stant, restlessly seeking in the Republic a place 
for his vacillating ambition, sneering at the 
men, deriding their ideas, feared by every- 
body, esteemed by none, — there is the material 
of the celebrated circle of 1795. Madame de 
Stael would have been glad to receive Talley- 
rand ; he would have been least out of place 
of all the guests in this brilliant caravansary of 
parties. He was still in America. He begged 
Madame de Stael to interest herself for him ; 
he wrote to her: *' If I stay another year here, 
it will kill me." He repeatedly anticipated 
his protestations of gratitude; indeed he ex- 
hausted the supply for the rest of his life. 
Madame de Stael obtained from the Conven- 
tion a decree of release from banishment; but 
Talleyrand judged it more prudent, before re- 
entering Paris, to land at Hamburg and there 
await the turn of events. 

Madame de Stael watched the men around 
her, studied the course of affairs, and fre- 
quented the Assembly. She has preserved 
some very vivid reminiscences of the meet- 
ings during those days : — 



72 Madame de StdeL 

*'The apologies of those who took part m the 
Terror afford truly the most unlikely school of sophism 
that one could attend. . . . Lebon, Carrier, etc., 
were all noticeably of one general type of physiog- 
nomy. They read their arguments with pale and 
nervous countenance, going from one side of the 
tribune to the other, in the Convention, like wild 
animals in a cage ; when seated they rocked to and 
fro without rising or changing their seats, with a sort 
of stationary agitation which seemed only to indicate 
the impossibility of being quiet.'' 

Meanwhile she pursued her plan of organiz- 
ing the French Republic upon the model of the 
United States, as she formerly endeavored to 
transform the old Monarchy on the English 
system. The former was at bottom the same 
government she had had in mind, with two 
chambers and an intellectual aristocracy which 
should substitute the aristocracy of birth; a 
republic of which Lafayette, set at liberty, 
would have been the president. The secret 
wish of Madame de Stael was to bring again 
into power, by this digression, the converted 
or reconciled Monarchists. '' Let the Constitu- 
tion be in the hands of honest men, and this 
Constitution will be recognized for what it is, 
the most reasonable in the universe," she said 
to Roederer. In order to attract to it those 
whom she called ''honest men," — that is to 



'''Reflections upon the Peace'' 73 

say, the old friends of 1 789-1 791, — she wrote 
her second political pamphlet : '' Reflections 
upon Internal Peace." It appeared in the 
summer of 1795. The republic, she said, is 
the only possible government; we must rally 
to it, and govern by it, so as to introduce that 
liberty which is the desire of the world. It is 
the drift of opinion: one must follow these 
currents ; one cannot decide them. " Men of 
genius appear to create the nature of things, 
but they have merely the art of being the first 
to recognize it." Nothing really separates the 
republican friends of order from the monarchi- 
cal friends of liberty. If the monarchists per- 
sist in wishing to restore the monarchy, only 
the exiles will profit by it; and besides, a 
restoration can never be accomplished save 
by a coup d'etat or by force. " France may 
stop at the republic; but to reach a limited 
monarchy, she must pass through a military 
government." 

The same fate which overtook royalty with- 
out royalists in 1 79 1 naturally overtook this 
republic without republicans. Those who 
were urged to it accepted it as provisional 
only: they entered it as they would enter a 
wayside inn ; they made no show of predilec- 
tion. Those whom they wished to exclude, 
on the contrary, thought the edifice belonged 



74 Madame de St del. 

to them, and refused to leave it. They were 
the men who had fought for the Republic for 
three years, and who had given themselves up 
as hostages to the Revolution. The Constitu- 
tional party naturally coalesced against them 
and the aristocratic portion of the exiles, 
whose one thought was to regain the suprem- 
acy, and what they called the '' aristocracy 
of regicides," whose one thought was to keep 
possession of it. Madame de Stael in vain 
protested her republican sentiments in her dis- 
courses, as she had formerly protested her 
monarchical sentiments; in vain she pushed 
conviction to the point of defending the 
famous decrees in the maintenance of two 
thirds of the Convention : but she convinced 
no one. The Convention accused her of not 
loving the Republicans, as the Court had once 
accused her of not loving the Royalists. The 
fact is that privately her preferences remained 
with her old-time friends, and that the majority 
among them openly conspired to overthrow 
the Republicans, if not to destroy even the 
Republic itself. The clash of self-interests 
poisoned still more the political suspicions. 
A republican among aristocrats, Madame de 
Stael remained, from valorous motives as 
much as from a sense of justice and from 
sympathy, an aristocrat among republicans. 



''Reflections upon the Peace'' 75 

The Comite de Salut Public accused her of 
playing a double game, and of encouraging 
the intrigues and plots of Royalists. It was 
the eternal contradiction in her life : she longed 
for Paris that she might re-establish her salon 
there; and scarcely was her salon reopened 
when it became impossible for her to remain in 
Paris. Louvait, who was a hypochondriac, de- 
nounced her secretly. Legendre, formerly a 
butcher, who had personal reasons for not lov- 
ing les salons dores, denounced her publicly. 
Stael was invited by the Government to re- 
move his wife from Paris. He showed a firm- 
ness which was no more than decorous. The 
Comite appreciated the absurdity of the meas- 
ure, and recalled it. Madame de Stael realized 
that her friends, her circle, and her politics 
had been too much talked about. It would 
never have entered her head to let herself be 
forgotten; but she set about a change of 
representation, and tried to appear before the 
world under another character. She now 
seemed for a time to dedicate herself to 
literature. 

She collected the novels which she had 
written in her youth. She added to them 
" An Epistle to Misfortune ; or Adele and 
Edouard," in the most commonplace kind of 
verse ; and a fragment entitled '' Zulma : an 



"jd Madame de StdeL 

Episode intended to serve as a Chapter on Love 
in a Work on the Influence of the Passions." 
" Zulma " bore relation to the book on the 
Passions begun in London, as " Atala " was 
related, in Chateaubriand's imagination, to " Le 
Genie du Christianisme j " but although the 
scene in *' Zulma " takes place " among the sav- 
ages on the banks of the Orinoco," there is no 
other similarity between the two works. Zulma 
resembles much more one of the ancient 
painted attendants of the *' Incas " of Marmontel 
than a forerunner of the Natchez. The whole 
was accompanied by an ** Essay on Fiction," 
superior to both novels and episodes. This 
essay presents the first outline of the book 
on "Literature." The author, still under the. 
spell of the crisis which France had just en- 
dured, endeavors to extract poetry therefrom. 
She passes the opinion that the realities of the 
Revolution surpassed in tragic horror the most 
terrific inventions of the poets. On coming 
out of this hell the imagination resorts by 
preference to the fictions of sentiment, which 
divert the soul, soothe, and console it. The 
future belongs to the romance, — a form of 
secondary importance heretofore, but which 
some great masters have already brought into 
regard. There is no thought of a historical 
novel. Tragedy may borrow her characters 



The '^ Essay on Fiction ^ 77 

from history ; she does not disfigure them at all, 
" she separates them from whatever is mortal 
in them." The historical novel, on the contrary, 
*' destroys the morality of history, overlaying 
the actions with a variety of motives that 
never existed." The romance of the future Is 
a work '' in which nothing Is true, but in which 
everything is probable." A romance of this 
kind " is one of the most beautiful productions 
of the human mind." It must embrace all the 
passions, — pride, ambition, avarice, as well as 
love. History never gives a complete picture 
of the passions ; it shows the result of them, 
but it does not analyze the motives nor un- 
cover all the springs of them. It '* does not 
attempt to portray the life of private individu- 
als, or the sentiments and characters of those 
who have never contributed to public events." 
Romance creates its own drama ; It creates its 
own moral and brings out the sanction of Its 
own acts. History is governed by accom- 
plished facts, and is always obscured by the 
glamour of glory. '' The Princess of Cleves," 
"■ Paul and Virginia," are masterpieces ; but 
*' Helolse," '* Clarissa Harlow," " Tom Jones," 
** Werther," — especially Werther, the revela- 
tion of German literature, "■ the superiority of 
which Increases every day," — are the true 
models of this type. 



yS Madame de StdeL 

If we consider that Madame de Stael cites in 
the first rank *' most of the writings of Ma- 
dame Riccoboni," but does not mention either 
*' Marianne " or " Manon Lescaut," we may 
guess the drift of her mind when she attempts 
later, on her own account, to compose one of 
those " passionate and melancholy works " in 
which is shown " the omnipotence of the 
heart," and which sends forth '' a voice heard 
in the desert of life," which gives at last ''a 
day of distraction to sorrow." These lines are 
the conclusion of the *' Essay on Fiction," and 
the tie between this essay and the treatise on 
'' The Influence of the Passions on the Happi- 
ness of Individuals and Nations." Madame de 
Stael again took up this work at Coppet, where 
she re-established herself with her father in 
December, 1795. She was never, to speak 
accurately, exiled by the Directory ; but that 
Government rendered her departure necessary 
and her return perilous. We shall now see 
her at work; let us examine her mode of 
labor at this period of her life, and see how 
her great works were prepared. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Book on "The Passions." — The Consulate. 
— The Book on " Literature. " — " Delphine." 

1796-1803. 

■jV/TADAME DE STAEL wrote neither by 
•^^■^ vocation nor by profession. To her, 
writing was a makeshift in Hfe and in poli- 
tics. She wrote to divert her thoughts 
from herself and to get rid of the reple- 
tion of feelings that agitated her; but she 
loved better to talk than to write, and to 
write her own thoughts than to read the 
thoughts of others. It often happened that 
she was unable to fix her thoughts upon a 
book. ''I do not understand anything of what 
I read," she would say then, ** and I am 
obliged to write." She also wrote, espe- 
cially at Coppet, for the pleasure of impart- 
ing her compositions to her guests, and to 
remind herself, at that distance, of Paris, which 
she always so sorely missed. It was indirect 
conversation. She warmed herself to her work 
when she had one in project ; she ceased to 
care for it as soon as it was published. She 



8o Madame de StdeL 

enjoyed the praises bestowed upon her writ- 
ings much as though they were for her sing- 
ing, her dancing, her eloquence, her intellect; 
but she was neither artful nor impatient con- 
cerning them. The successes of others did not 
offend her; discriminating eulogy of others did 
not strike her as a robbery ; she could bear crit- 
icism, and she said : " Self-esteem must accus- 
tom itself to put a proper value upon praise, 
for in time one gets only what one deserves." 

There was an irregularity in her mode of 
life even more than in her work. At Coppet, 
as at Paris, there was a continual coming and 
going of visitors. She improvised her books 
in the midst of them ; her ideas gushed forth 
in repartee. It was just here that Benjamin 
Constant was so valuable to her. He electri- 
fied her. Many were the sparks struck off 
and lost in space. Chenedolle, one of the 
guests at Coppet, says : *' She had more intel- 
lect than she could manage." What she kept 
she threw impromptu, in chance moments, 
upon scraps of paper. She scratched away at 
random, anywhere, — at her toilet, under the 
hands of the hair-dresser, standing before the 
mantelpiece, at table, or as she took her early 
breakfast. She had neither hours of retire- 
ment nor writing-desk. Far from wearying 
her, all these visits were a comfort to her. 



The Book on " The Passions '' 8i 

She felt no one importunate. There was no 
study which she would not gladly abandon for 
conversation. A good memory, a rare pres- 
ence of mind, enabled her to take up the 
broken thread again. 

But this continual picking up implies an in- 
cessant breaking off; the seams harden and 
the inspiration grows cold. *' Her improvisa- 
tions," says Chenedolle again, " were much 
more brilliant than her writings." As soon as 
they were copied she read her chapters to her 
friends, and while reading she talked of them ; 
after which she went over them again, improv- 
ing them according to the advice received. In 
this way they grew and expanded ; whether she 
would or no, whatever she remembered of her 
intercourse with others was sure to enter into 
her work. It was full of brilliant passages and 
witticisms, but it was also encumbered with 
digressions ; it became wandering and uneven. 
Being loosely woven, it stretched, it broke, 
and was re-woven continually. But Madame 
de Stael heeded it not; and upon the proofs 
she poured forth still more, never economizing 
either a word or an idea. 

In this manner the book on "■ The Passions " 

was composed ; it appeared in the autumn of 

1796. Critics have dwelt on the insufficiency 

of fundamental studies, the lack of method, 

6 



82 Madame de StdeL 

and the volatile and fugitive character of the 
thought in it. They lay too much stress on 
the compass of it, which is artificial, and on 
the ensemble y which is defective. The value 
of the work lies in the treatment of detail. 

Madame de Stael conceived this work under 
the spell of the great disenchantments of 1793, 
and it bears this impress. " I will stifle 
within me," she said at that time, " everything 
that distinguishes me among women, — natural 
thoughts, passionate emotions, and generous 
impulses of enthusiasm; but I shall evade sor- 
row, dreadful sorrow." Where find a refuge? 
Man knows but few, — amusement for the 
frivolous, resignation for the strong, faith for 
the pious. 

Faith was a quality lacking in Madame de 
Stael. She had a certain vague aspiration in 
her heart, a restlessness of imagination, a sort 
of undefined and instinctive religiosity which 
left a place open in her soul for faith. But 
she evaded the thought of it, fearful of find- 
ing only a vacuum. Roederer composed in 
1796 an essay on ** Funereal Institutions." In 
it he asked, if the whole raison d'etre of the 
belief in the immortality of the soul does not 
proceed from a " natural desire for a perpetua- 
tion of oneself in the memory of mankind. '^ 
Madame de Stael wrote to him : " There is an 



The Book on " The Passions T 83 

analysis of the desire for immortality which I 
dread to find true. Upon all these great sub- 
jects I have never had but one very positive 
thought. I have always believed that religious 
ideas should contribute toward the happiness 
of mankind, and I have treated myself as I 
suppose one should treat others ; I am afraid 
to take them away from myself" They were 
like a prop to one who lives in fear of vertigo, 
rather than succor to a drowning soul. 

And what of amusement? She made use 
of this undoubtedly, say her enemies ; but she 
never pretended to be either satisfied or as- 
suaged by it. She might try to forget herself 
in it, but she never esteemed herself frivolous, 
and would never have made forgetfulness a 
moral remedy. There remains only stoicism, 
therefore, as a retreat for the soul left to itself; 
the classic consolations of the philosophers, — 
friendship, study, benevolence. Friendship she 
finds but a pale-faced consolation. Study is 
for her more effective; and benevolence she 
finds more helpful even than study. But, after 
all, there is but one efficacious means of sal- 
vation, — flight. To fear the passions, which 
are the soul's bonds, to evade them, to get 
free from them, even at the price of rending 
oneself; to be resigned to receive life " drop 
by drop," like infants and wise men; to say 



84 Madame de StdeL 

to oneself that the only true happiness lies in 
repose of soul, and that there is but one sen- 
timent in the world that is not deceptive, 
namely, pity, — there, she says, ** is a good, 
final cause in the moral order." 

I have sought its effects, but it is not at 
Coppet that I have been able to see them. 
There passion rules. It was then that the 
author, in some letters which are a strange 
commentary on her book, wrote to a relative 
of Benjamin Constant : ^' Oh ! I have felt 
strongly that upon him alone depends the 
fate of my life." This is the weak side of 
this moral treatise. But whoever knows the 
book finds in it a confession which is sincere 
and which forms its chief interest. Passion 
triumphs in it under all disguises, always over- 
stepping the mark, always absorbed by itself, 
even in despair, and glorying in its wounds, 
" It cost me dear," says the writer, *' to say 
that to love passionately was not true happi- 
ness." Madame de Stael said so, indeed, but 
she never believed it. 

"At those altars on which I had kindled a flame 
I gave all to that God whom I trembled to name." ^ 

This is all there is to the book, and it is 
what Madame de Stael made it in spite of her- 

1 "Meme au pied des autels que je faisais fumer 
J'offrais tout a ce Dieu que je n'osais nommer." 



The Book on " The Pass ions ^ 85 

self. What she intended to make it is quite 
another thing. She would like to hav^e con- 
founded her calumniators by a very grave and 
austere production. " Condemned to celebrity 
without being understood, I feel the necessity 
of making myself judged by my writings. . . . 
Calumniated continually, and finding myself of 
too little importance to talk about myself, I 
have yielded to the hope that in publishing 
this fruit of my meditations I may give a true 
idea of my habits of life and of the nature 
of my character." Then follows this majestic 
introduction of the book, which appears to be 
a sort of '' Spirit of the Laws " applied to the 
passions: "Governments should minister to 
the real happiness of all, and moralists should 
teach individuals to dispense with happiness." 
The part concerning the duties of governments 
remained in project, and one cannot regret it; 
the part called " Of Moralists " is the one part 
completed. She persuaded no one, the au- 
thor least of all women in the world, and 
least of all at the time when the book was 
brought forth. 

The analysis which Madame de Stael makes 
of the passions is diffuse, and at times its style 
of rhetoric is rather odd. One smiles at this 
beginning of a dissertation — one might almost 
call it a fantaisie brillante — " On Suicide" : 



86 Madame de StdeL 

" He who will include suicide in the number 
of his resolutions may enter upon the career 
of the passions." Madame de Stael deals with 
love in limited and absolute monarchies and 
in republics. She speaks of ambition like a 
person who has never observed its effects ; it 
seems as though she had never known either 
Mirabeau or Narbonne, or even Necker. She 
speaks of love, on the other hand, like a woman 
consumed and penetrated by those fiery pas- 
sions of which Pascal treats. On this theme 
she is inexhaustible. She seems to have in 
herself no conception either of lassitude or, 
with stronger reason, of the nausea of a pas- 
sion that is spent. The bitter restlessness of 
'' Adolphe " is absent from her writings. But 
love unsatisfied, love misunderstood, love be- 
trayed, all the crises of neglect and the aban- 
donment of love, all the dolorous repertory of 
Phedre and Hermione, are poured forth from 
her pen in infinite lamentations, always elo- 
quent and moving. There is heard amid them 
a note which announces new harmonies in lit- 
erature. The happiness of love is sad, not 
merely because of vanity or the satiety of 
pleasure, but because of the thought of death, 
which is inseparable from it. '^ Love when a 
passion always brings melancholy. There is 
an inward conviction that all that comes 



The Book on " The Passions T Sy 

after love is as nothing; . . . and this con- 
viction makes one think of death even in the 
happiest moments of love." We feel that 
Chateaubriand is about to appear, and that 
Lamartine is born. Then follow real heart- 
cries which let her secret escape: ''Brilliant 
successes would seem to offer the proudest 
gratification to the friend of the woman who 
obtains them; but the enthusiasm to which 
these successes give birth is perhaps less last- 
ing than the attraction founded upon the most 
frivolous advantages. A woman's face, be the 
strength or extent of her intellect what it may, 
... is always either an obstacle or an advan- 
tage in the history of her life ; men have 
always chosen to have it so!' 

Along with these avowals Madame de Stael 
introduces here and there in her book some 
souvenirs of the Revolution, and some master- 
ful pages which reveal the historian. We may 
well compare them with those which Joseph 
de Maistre wrote about the same time in his 
'* Considerations on France." ** We think," 
says Madame de Stael, ^' that we may influ- 
ence revolutions, that we may influence or be 
the cause, yet we are only a stone thrown aside 
by the turning of the great wheel; another 
might have taken your place, a different means 
might have produced the same result; the 



88 Madame de StdeL 

name of chief signifies the first to be precipi- 
tated by the crowd that marches behind, al- 
ways pushing to the front." She had already 
written in 1795 : ** When Robespierre tried to 
separate himself from his companions and 
make his own destiny, he was lost; he had 
no personal force, he only ruled when he put 
himself at the head of all the crimes." 

The treatise on "The Passions " made a great 
sensation. Madame de Stael desired this heart- 
ily, and hoped that success would reopen to 
her the gates of Paris. '•' Commend the book," 
she wrote to Roederer, *' so that the author 
be not persecuted." It was indeed persecution 
which then began and continued for eighteen 
years, with more or less brief intervals of 
truce. " Her conduct in Paris has afflicted the 
friends of liberty very much," wrote Delacroix, 
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the minister- 
resident at Geneva, in December of 1795. The 
resident had orders to watch the relations of 
Madame de Stael with strangers and exiles, 
notably with Wickham and Narbonne. They 
were suspected of fostering rebellion in the 
East. From that time Madame de Stael had 
the police in pursuit, and her record in the 
hands of the police. When Narbonne ap- 
proached from the frontier, the Directory 
ordered " that he be carried off with all his 



The Consulate. 89 

papers." They accused ^Madame do Stael, 
'* always garrulous and intriguing by nature," 
of serving as emissary to conspirators. If she 
tried to go into France, she was to be stopped. 
She exposed herself to no risks, however, and 
remained provisionally at Coppet. But she 
made every endeavor to obtain a passport. 
She alleged the necessity of putting her affairs 
in order; her husband was dissipating her 
children's patrimony : with a revenue of eighty 
thousand livres, he had managed to accumulate 
a debt of two hundred thousand livres. The 
exile's solicitations were urged according as 
the fever to get to Paris raged upon her. 
" The winter in this place is mortal to me," 
she wrote to Roederer; "I spit blood all last 
winter, and the north wind does me intolerable 
harm." Her friends reasoned with her, but 
she rebelled. " I only understand love as life: 
one must mourn for what it lacks." She pro- 
tests her attachment to the Republic. Her 
desire is so keen that she forgets sincerely 
her acts and writings, — everything that has 
compromised her, and everything that has 
done her honor. " Since the lOth of August," 
she declared to the minister-resident of the 
Republic at Geneva, '*I have not written a 
line that could relate to the operations of the 
Government." She stopped at no contradic- 



go Madame de Stdel. 

tions. " Do you not think," she asked of the 
same resident some time afterward, " that the 
Directory would be glad to see me in Paris ? 
They know that I am part author of Benjamin 
Constant's work, and, that granted, they have 
no right to suspect my devotion to the cause." 

Indeedj this work of Benjamin, '' On the 
Strength of the Present Government of France 
and the Necessity of supporting it," had made 
some stir. Talleyrand, who in his retreat at 
Hamburg had received with the pamphlet an 
account of affairs at Coppet, wrote discreetly 
to Madame de Stael : ''Who is this Benjamin 
Constant, author of a very remarkable book 
which I have just read ? Is he attached to 
Narbonne ? I found in it many things that 
might have been thought or written by the 
two together; I found indeed in some shape 
Narbonne's very remarks, or reminders of 
them." 

At last, in the month of April, 1797, she was 
permitted to re-enter her own hotel. She 
thought she should thereafter dwell there in 
peace. Her friends were again in power. 
Talleyrand took charge of the Foreign Affairs, 
and intended to associate Benjamin Constant 
with him as general secretary. Madame de 
Stael recommenced her dinners. Among the 
new guests were to be seen Luclen and Joseph 



The Consulate, 91 

Bonaparte; the latter was always faithful to 
her. But scarcely was she again at home ere 
she found herself the butt of party attacks. 
The Royalists called her a " fury." It was 
because she had no respect for their persons 
and condemned their politics. She had noth- 
ing to hope from their return to govern- 
ment. She expected liberty and justice from 
them least of all in the world. She knew them 
well. She was by no means allured by their 
new pretexts. She would not take their pro- 
grammes for acts of faith, nor their watchwords 
for their word of honor. 

"The Royalist party in both councils invoked 
Republican principles, liberty of the press, liberty of 
suffrage, — all sorts of liberty in fact, especially that 
of overturning the Directory. The popular party, on 
the contrary, built always upon circumstances, and 
defended revolutionary measures which served as a 
momentary guaranty to the Government. The Re- 
publicans were constrained to disavow their own 
principles, because they were used by others against 
themselves ; and the Royalists borrowed the weapons 
of the Republicans to attack the Republic." 

She deplored the coup d'Hat of Fructidor, 
but she deplored particularly that this coup 
d'etat, so disastrous to republican liberty, 
seemed necessary to the welfare of the Repub- 
lic. " I would surely never have advised," she 



92 Madame de Side I. 

said, " the establishment of a repubHc in 
France ; but once in existence, I should not be 
inclined to wish to overturn it." What she 
condemned unreservedly were the proscrip- 
tions and the fresh terrorism which fell upon 
the Jacobins. " She made the i8th, but not the 
19th," said Talleyrand. On the 1 8th she was 
with the party in power; on the 19th she was 
once more with the party of the victims, and 
she groaned to see her friends more divided 
and more impotent than ever. 

Bonaparte came back to Paris bringing 
trophies of Italy. He had genius, glory, judg- 
ment, magnanimity, youth, fortune. Every- 
thing paled before him. Madame de Stael did 
not perceive in him then the deformities which 
she was pleased to represent in him by and 
by. He seemed to her remarkable '* for char- 
acter and intellect as well as for his victories," 
— merciful to the vanquished, to whom he 
promised justice; speaking *'to the imagina- 
tion of the French people; " ''sensible of the 
beauties of Ossian ; " gifted with *' all the gen- 
erous qualities which throw the more extraor- 
dinary quahties into relief." She saw him 
then as he appeared in David's immortal pic- 
ture, — the figure rather slim and nervous, but- 
toned up to the throat in the plain gray 
redingote; the cheeks pale and hollow, the 



The Consulate, 93 

brow wide and high under the long tumbling 
locks, the eagle nose, the eyes open to the far 
infinite, searching space, and with something 
imperious, eager, and melancholy in them all 
at once ; the halo of success and the fascina- 
tion of mystery. 

^' Cleopatra ^ was not possessed of striking beauty, 
but her grace and intellect illumined her face with 
such charms that it was difficult to resist her. She 
especially possessed the art of captivating. Her 
constant relations with Greece had developed in her 
the penetrating charm of the language and its seduc- 
tiveness. Caesar had the virtues and passions which 
drew her to his own interests, and it was rather by 
genius than by calculation that he succeeded in 
everything." 

The dream which thus crossed Madame de 
Stael's mind left no traces save in these lines of 
an article contained in the " Biographic Univer- 
selle." But these are luminous. The deception 
was immediate. The enchantment was broken 
at the first interview, under the gaze of the 
steely-eyed Corsican. One cannot say which 
Madame de Stael pardoned less in Bonaparte, 
— her not having understood him or her con- 
sternation before him. Not only did she not 
captivate him, but (and the fact was a sort of 

1 "Cleopatre," an article by Madame de Stael in the 
** Biographic Universelle/' 1811-1813. 



94 Madame de St del. 

monstrous prodigy to her) he reduced her to 
silence. " I found no words to reply to him 
when he came to me to say that he had looked 
for my father at Coppet. . . . When I had re- 
covered a little from my confusion of admira- 
tion, I was seized with a strong feeling of fear. 
... I saw him several times, and yet I was 
never able to overcome the difficulty of breath- 
ing which I felt in his presence. . . . Each time 
that I heard him speak I was struck with his su- 
periority." But each time also she felt his in- 
accessibility. Her kind of inspired political 
women was unendurable to him. '' She was 
carried away by him," reports a contemporary, 
who himself was much dazzled by Bonaparte 
at that time and very acrimonious toward 
Madame de Stael ; '' she sought and followed 
him everywhere; . . . she aroused his dislike 
at once. Madame de Stael, after having made 
him uneasy, made him displeased. He re- 
ceived her advances coldly. He disconcerted 
her by his firm and sometimes withering 
words - A sort of defiance was set up between 
them, and, as they were both passionate, this 
defiance was not long in turning to hatred." 

They did not reach absolute hatred until 
three years later ; but Madame de Stael had a 
presentiment of it from the beginning. If she 
essayed to re-conquer him by her charms, it was 



The Consulate. 95 

because, with her, illusion was stronger than 
judgment. In the mean time she continued to 
travel between Coppet and Paris, dividing her- 
self between the great affection and the great 
ambition that filled her existence, — her father 
and her salon. She had two sons, — one born 
in 1790, the other in 1792 ; in October, 1797, at 
Coppet, she had a daughter Albertine, — the 
happiness and crown of her life, who, of all the 
felicities she' longed for, gave her the only one 
that never failed her. 

In Switzerland she had ChenedoUe as her 
guest. In Paris she was much with Madame 
Recamier and Madame de Beaumont. She 
worked, in her leisure hours in Switzerland, 
upon a new work, but this did not absorb all 
her time. " Being yet a young and impression- 
able woman," she wrote to Roederer, *' I do 
not yet live wholly within my own self-esteem. 
The time will come only too soon when my 
book will be the most important event in my 
life." 

She returned to Paris the evening of the 
1 8th Brumaire. The event of that day did not 
surprise her, but she would have preferred 
another man for it. Always an admirer of the 
American Republic and of the English Con- 
stitution, she would have preferred, if there 
must be a soldier in power, a Washington or 



96 Madame de Side I. 

at least a William of Orange. She thought of 
Moreau : '' His virtues rendered him worthy 
the place; " and of Bernadotte, who " combined 
the qualities both of statesman and soldier." 
A Roman republic succeeding a state entirely 
Roman as to its laws, seemed to her as 
odious as the old regime. Nothing appeared 
more formidable to liberty than a Caesar 
installed in the monarchy of Louis XIV. 
Nevertheless in the first weeks she again made 
trial of coquetry with the new master. Bona- 
parte appeared to soften. He placed Ben- 
jamin Constant in the tribune; but Benjamin 
immediately threw himself into the Opposition. 
About the month of January, 1800, he decided 
to denounce to the world the " dawn of 
tyranny." His discourse was prepared in 
Madame de Stael's salon. *'Now," said 
Benjamin to her, *' your salon is full of peo- 
ple whom you like ; if I speak, to-morrow it 
will be deserted. Think well of it ! " '' One 
must follow one's convictions," she replied. 
He made his discourse. Madame de Stael had 
invited to dinner that evening several friends 
who belonged to the Government party. At 
five o'clock she had received ten excuses. 
One was from Talleyrand ; this was a rupture 
of contact for years, and of esteem for all 
their lives long. 



The Consulate, 97 

Her salon began to be suspected. Fouche 
had some compassion for Madame de Stael, 
and she considered him a man of *' ex- 
traordinary talent for revolution." He tried to 
reason with her. " The First Consul," he said, 
*' accuses you of inciting your friends against 
his government." She declared that she was 
incapable of that; and perhaps she believed so 
while she said it. But Fouch6 was not so 
wholly convinced as to be able to persuade his 
master. Bonaparte was then on his way to 
Italy. In passing through Switzerland, he 
stopped at Coppet and visited Necker. Necker 
did not think him so extraordinary as the 
public seemed to do, and was not, like his 
daughter, dumfounded in his presence. He 
gave him a lesson, as he had formerly done 
to Louis XVI. Bonaparte little thought that 
he would one day become by alliance the 
nephew of that unfortunate king. He took his 
lesson with a bad grace. Necker left upon 
him the impression of a judicious banker led 
astray by an ideal and blind in State affairs. 

Madame de Stael arrived a little later, and 
remained all summer in Switzerland, writing 
letter after letter to her friends in Paris in her 
endeavor to manage her return in the win- 
ter. ''What woman," she said to Roederer, 
" has ever shown herself more enthusiastic for 
7 



98 Madame de Stdel. 

Bonaparte than I?" "We hope for peace 
here, and we admire Bonaparte very much," 
she wrote in July to a new friend who became 
a great favorite, namely, Fauriel. But at the 
same time, under the stroke of disappointment 
and impatience, her sharp words shot forth 
only too freely ; and one can imagine the 
motives with which the Government spies and 
the public generally charged her, from the 
traces she has left in her souvenirs: '* I hoped 
that Bonaparte would be defeated, for this 
seemed the only way to put a stop to the 
advance of tyranny. . . . The good of France 
demanded that she suffer reverses. . . . Did 
not Moreau regret the laurels of Stockach 
and Hohenlinden? He saw only France in 
the First Consul's orders; but such a man 
should have felt justified in judging the Gov- 
ernment which employed him, and should 
have asserted, under the circumstances, what 
he considered the true interests of his country." 
The reports received from Switzerland were 
not at all of a nature to weaken the pre- 
cautions of the First Consul. Madame de 
Stael capped the climax by publishing a 
book which was, like all her previous 
conduct, a singular mixture of coquetry 
toward Bonaparte in person, of satirical allu- 
sions to his government, and of conspiracy 



" Literaturer 99 

against his power : ** Literature considered in 
its Relations to Social Institutions." 

This work, which made a volume of six hun- 
dred pages, appeared in the month of April, 
1800. It is a thesis on the perfectibility — we 
should say nowadays the progress — of the hu- 
man mind in all its works. This progress finds 
its consecration in liberty; liberty finds its 
security in republican institutions conceived 
and applied according to the author's system. 
French literature regenerated by republican 
customs will be rejuvenated by the influence 
of foreign literatures. 

To show the relations existing between 
hterature and social customs, to seek out those 
which may exist between literature and po- 
litical institutions, is to do the work of the 
philosophical historian, and project a design 
inspired by Montesquieu ; but for such a work 
there was need of immense study, illimitable 
reading, universal knowledge, and a superior 
critical faculty. Madame de Stael had these 
only in part, added to a good will and occasional 
inspirations. It needed, above all, a complete 
disinterestedness of mind which should allow 
itself to be shaped by history. Madame de 
Stael was not ready to yield herself on this 
point; she goes far beyond this. As she is 
sustaining a thesis on the progress of all 



lOO Madame de Side I. 

things, and notably of literature under liberty, 
she makes history yield to her point. The ef- 
fort which the writer makes confuses her own 
intelligence, and disturbs her naturally good 
faculties of discrimination, particularly as con- 
cerning the ancients. 

Madame de Stael speaks of the Romans 
better than of the Greeks, — not that she pre- 
fers the genius of Rome, but she understands 
it more thoroughly. Inferences abound in 
these chapters ; and judged at this distance, 
they seem strangely wide of the mark. Why, 
it is in the time of the reappearance of the 
very wonders of Rome, and when history seems 
repeating its prodigies, that the author writes, 
— and thinks she is composing an epigram : 
*' Among the ancients genius was permitted to 
nominate itself, and virtue to offer its services. 
The nation gladly recognized their ambition 
for her esteem. Nowadays one must glide 
into glory by stealth. . . . Mediocrity is all- 
powerful ! " 

Happily the chapters do not consist wholly of 
clever sayings. They unfold a number of views 
in politics and history, — this among others : the 
art of thinking is associated with the conserva- 
tion of liberty ; democracy has need of a pure 
language and beautiful eloquence to keep the 
mind constantly in a state of dignity. It is 



" Literature^ loi 

this constant poise of the soul which '' makes 
mere territory a fatherland by giving to the 
nation which inhabits it a unity of tastes, 
customs, and sentiments." Military strength, 
which always remains the same in its nature, 
will never establish anything original in spir- 
itual progress; it breaks the wills of men, it 
never forms the character which in groups of 
men makes nations. 

The author develops an opinion concerning 
the Middle Ages which is little short of haz- 
ardous for her times : The human race did 
not retrograde during that period. History 
has an invariable object in view, — universal 
civiHzation; it works for that object without 
ceasing, and it is *' thought, always the same, 
which we see arising from the abysm of facts i 
and of ages." 

We perceive, in this voyage of exploration 
which Madame de Stael makes through mod- 
ern literatures, that she knows little of Italy 
and still less of Spain. She speaks well of 
Machiavelli, understands Dante but little, and 
Cervantes not at all. She is in haste to reach 
the North, which attracts and holds her attention. 
She sees everywhere in the North " the spirit of 
liberty," and she constructs her theory on the 
authenticity of the poems of Ossian. Fancy 
plays a very large part in these essays, but 



I02 Madame de Stdel. 

invention has its share also. For example, this 
thought bears some resemblance to what was 
said of love's melancholy in the book on *' The 
Passions," — *' Man owes his greatest achieve- 
ments to the sad conviction of the incomplete- 
ness of his destiny." Madame de Stael shows 
in Shakspeare tragic beauties of a new order 
for French minds, — " pity with no mixture of 
admiration for the sufferer, pity for an insig- 
nificant and even a contemptible creature." 

The chapter on German literature has but 
one point of interest: it merely shows how 
much Madame de Stael knew of Germany be- 
fore going there. She knew vastly more than 
is commonly supposed, but she knew it at 
' second or even third hand, through her friends 
Benjamin Constant, Chenedolle, Adrien de Le- 
zay, Gerando, and especially Charles de Villers, 
who was her initiator. There was much trans- 
lating and much imitating done toward the 
close of the old regime. There was a return 
to it as soon as there was leisure again. 
Poems, romances, dramas, Goethe, Schiller, 
Klopstock, Wieland, were introduced into 
France; but they were so clothed as to be 
more or less disguised, under the pretext of 
putting them more in touch and fashion at 
Paris. 

As there was no political liberty in France in 



'' Literature^ 103 

the seventeenth century, Madame de Stael will 
recognize only a theatrical literature there. 
The theatre, in her eyes, absorbed every- 
thing. She does not appear to have read 
**L'Histoire des Variations," nor meditated 
upon the ** Thoughts " of Pascal. She immeas- 
urably overrates the eighteenth century. She 
treats Voltaire as a poet. She makes this 
resumi on Jean Jacques : " He discovered noth- 
ing, but he set fire to everything." Next 
she comes to the future, which she believes she 
can discern. Montesquieu, Rousseau, Condillac, 
republican spirits all, she says, began the rev- 
olution of literature. It was fitting that licen- 
tiousness should be banished from books as 
from manners, under the Republic. The object 
of literature will no longer be, as in the seven- 
teenth century, the art of writing ; it will be the 
art of thinking, and literary greatness will be 
commensurate with the progress of civilization. 
She stops here a moment to descant on the 
destiny of women writers. She puts into 
maxims her own personal experience. Marie 
Antoinette and Rivarol made sport of her, the 
Directory tormented her; so she says, " Under 
monarchies women [who write] have to fear 
ridicule ; under republics, hatred." Of Montes- 
quieu her praise is cheap. It costs her no 
more to add this aphorism, which would have 



I04 Madame de Stdel. 

made Catherine the Great pensive : Women 
without talent for conversation or literature 
have ordinarily more talent for shirking their 
duties; and nations without enlightenment 
know not how to be free, but often change 
masters." 

She insists that politics could become a 
science ; but her good sense warns her at once 
against the " atrocious absurdities " of the 
charlatanry of formulae and social algebra. 
" Though calculation be never so precise," 
she says, " if it is not in accordance with mo- 
rality, it is false." " Morality is the nature of 
things in the intellectual order." Virtue pro- 
ceeds from enthusiasm ; analysis kills it. Ma- 
dame de Stael declares that the romance will 
become more impassioned, and will take its 
ideas still more from observation of the world. 
She believes that comedy will abandon the 
ridiculous in order to attack vice and unmask 
the cynic, the brazen, the "charlatans of vice, 
the scorners of principle, the mockers at the 
soul;" comedy will snatch away their mask 
of pretended proficiency, and will show them 
crouching at the feet of true power. Madame 
de Stael thus pre-announces her own romances, 
and predicts a theatre which will not prevail 
until much later. 

She seeks in a groping way for the roads 



" Literature r 105 

that poetry will take, but discovers them not. 
Poetry still remains with the rhetoric of her 
youth. She sees the future of poetry in the 
progress of reason and the development of 
eloquence. The poetry of her own time has 
passed her by, and she has not even suspected 
it ; the new poetry is springing up all around 
her, and she does not discern it. 

She had not known the great poet, her con- 
temporary, the man who was called to regen- 
erate the French poetry of his times; the 
Terror crushed him, jealously desirous of anni- 
hilating all that was original and fecund in 
the genius of the age. In the elegy, the ode, 
and the satire Andre Chenier found the forms 
best suited to the spirit of his generation to 
sing of love and to defend liberty. In his 
** Hermes " he maps out the poem of an age 
that contained Montesquieu, Diderot, Buffon, 
Lamarck, Lavoisier, Laplace, Geoffroy Saint- 
Hilaire, and Andre-Marie Ampere. Had it 
not been for the envious folly of Robespierre, 
France might have had her Goethe. The 
guillotine spared mediocrity. Republican lit- 
erature had nothing but versifiers. Poetry was 
preparing to revenge herself by very different 
means. 

Chateaubriand wrote his *' Genie du Christi- 
anisme " about the time that Madame de Stael 



io6 Madame de Stdel. 

published her book on *' Literature." They 
were the antipodes of each other. Chateau- 
briand felt that she was a rival and hostile, as 
did Rivarol of old, when she began to speak. 
But this was a more serious rivalry. Here was 
no question of rivalry in the salon; it was a 
question of the intellectual domination of the 
epoch. Chateaubriand wrote to Fontanes con- 
cerning Madame de Stael's book a letter full of 
naughty insinuations : *' My particular hobby 
is to see Jesus Christ everywhere, as Madame 
de Stael sees perfectibility. . . . She really 
has the air of not liking the present govern- 
ment and of regretting the days of greater lib- 
erty." Madame de Stael cherished no rancor; 
*'Atala" made her forget the offence, and she 
pardoned the author in admiring him. But 
though Chateaubriand attracted her, he did not 
convert her to his Neo-Christian rhetoric. 

" I think him more melancholy than sensi- 
tive," she wrote. She and her friends belonged 
too much to the old days, and were too much 
filled with the philosophical spirit to fall into 
the romantic snare. They could not under- 
stand religion, either as the State machine of 
Bonaparte or as the poetical machine of 
Chateaubriand. This " religion of bells," as 
some one has wittily called it, this ** Catholic 
Epicureanism," this '* religious fatuity " of the 



" Literaturer 107 

author of " Atala," seemed to them false and 
affected, with just a shade of silliness. Ma- 
dame de Stael had to read Klopstock in the 
original tongue, to become acquainted with 
Schiller, to take lessons of Schlegel, and to 
converse with Goethe especially, in order to 
comprehend what elements of poetry one 
could draw from Christianity, — from its tradi- 
tions, its songs, and its ceremonies. In her 
heart she never yielded to it completely, grant- 
ing exceptions, but rejecting the theory, and 
too sensible of the incongruities of detail to 
be dazzled by it. ** This poor Chateaubriand 
will cover himself with ridicule," she wrote. 
" He has a chapter headed * A study of vir- 
ginity in its poetical relations.' " 

But before Chateaubriand caused her this 
astonishment she found herself denounced on 
every hand for her ** Literature." This book, 
said Fontanes, presents ** the ideal of a per- 
fection sought for the sake of opposition to 
whatever now is." 

Fontanes and the other critics of the consu- 
lar antechamber gladly condemned it. Madame 
de Stael was not at this time wishing the fall of 
the Consulate ; on the contrary, she was hop- 
ing to make for herself a place in it and to be 
an ornament to it. She put her conditions as 
she would put those of history. Just what did 



io8 Madame de Side I. 

she desire? Nothing commonplace, surely. 
She was not avaricious. The material bene- 
fits of power were nothing to her; she was 
not capable either of the discreet and prudent 
fidelity of a Maintenon, or of the secret and 
tenacious intrigue of one of the Ursins ; it was 
fame that she wished for. She was an orator 
from the soul, and, by reason of her tempera- 
ment, orator of the Opposition. The rule of 
Fox in England, or of Lamartine in the Gov- 
ernment of July, — this would have been her 
political vocation, had she been a man. As 
a woman, at the side of an all-powerful mas- 
ter, she longed to become the companion of 
his genius and the official muse of his reign. 
Whoever can read between the lines will find 
this insinuated constantly in the book on ** Lit- 
erature." There is no malicious allusion in 
the book which is not atoned for by this 
maxim : " Genius is good sense applied to 
new ideas." She allowed this genius to Bona- 
parte; but Bonaparte understood the new 
ideas differently. 

To him the essential idea was the popular 
idea which Danton with his powerful realism 
had defined in a word, — to profit by the Revo- 
lution. The people intended to profit by the 
Revolution. Bonaparte intended to absorb 
the Revolution and glorify it in his person. 



' ' Literature. " 1 09 

Power, wealth, conquest, government, — these 
were his objects and motives of action. He 
was the State, under all its forms. His Re- 
public was the reverse of Madame de Stael's. 
She had reproved in Mirabeau a regal de- 
mocracy; she had an Instinctive horror of the 
Caesarian democracy which arose with the 
Consulate. Bonaparte judged her clearly as 
he judged everything else. He demanded 
obedience, first of all. His system implied a 
censor and a poHce over the public mind; 
there was no place in his empire for a bureau ; 
of liberal enthusiasm. Madame de Stael pro- 
posed grandeur at this price to him, and offered 
him peace. Grandeur, as later the crown, he 
will not receive save at his own hands; the 
peace of liberal salons he has no belief in, 
more than in the peace of European councils.; 
The fatality of his destiny doomed him to sup- , 
port himself only by his own efforts, to defend j 
himself only by attacking, to protect himself \ 
only by invasion. This was why there could be ' 
nothing in common between him and Madame 
de Stael. 

He rudely showed her this, and she was 
roused to war with him the more aggressively 
as she had formerly been so coquettish with 
him. When she returned to Paris, in March, 
1802, and was established in the rue Crenelle, 



I lO Madame de Stdel. 

she surrounded herself with all those who still 
dared to shine outside the precincts of the Con- 
sul. This was the period of greatest splendor 
for her salon. Near her was the friend of her 
heart, Madame Recamier, — " la belle Juliette," 
as she called her, — the enchantment of all eyes ; 
Madame de Beaumont, of melancholy and sickly 
grace ; her old friends, save Talleyrand, who 
kept out of the way, more careful for the State 
than he had been for the Church, but including 
Narbonne, who escaped sometimes from the sur- 
veillance of Madame de Laval, and reappeared 
much crestfallen; Benjamin, an incomparable 
interlocutor, who leads the orchestra; Camille 
Jordan, in politics the beloved disciple ; Ge- 
rando, who expounds Germany ; Fauriel, who 
expatiates on the literatures of the South. This 
is also the high-water mark of Madame de 
Stael's own eloquence and marvellous conver- 
sation, strewn with charming traits, enlivened 
with subtle repartee, delicious wit, gayety, satire, 
historic suggestiveness, penetrating analyses of 
the heart, of sentiment still more, and of en- 
thusiasm. '' If I were queen," said Madame 
de Tesse, '' I would command Madame de 
Stael to talk to me forever." 

Bonaparte was determined to silence her. 
She felt his iron hand upon her shoulder and 
writhed under It. Then ensued a shower of 



" Literaturer 1 1 1 

epigrams interspersed with couplets of lofty 
indignation and magnificent protestations. She 
gave herself up to a bitter and morbid spirit 
which her anger let loose within her, and 
which, say her hearers, " carried fire and sword 
with it." Benjamin, being then in disgrace, had 
no power to stay her darts. The whole con- 
sulate was arraigned before this sarcastic tri- 
bunal : " We heard every evening the accounts 
of Bonaparte's meetings with his committee; 
and these accounts might have amused us if 
they had not made us deeply anxious for the 
fate of France." Nothing was spared, not 
even the system which " conciliated men's in- 
terests at the expense of their virtues, de- 
praved opinion by means of sophisms, and 
gave to the nation as an aim war instead of 
liberty." Neither did she spare the courtiers, 
who were either confessed regicides or royal- 
ists won over, and all ** chevaliers of circum- 
stance;" nor the priests, — " he had need of a 
clergy as of councillors." Nor did the master 
himself escape, — " the bourgeois gentleman on 
the throne," who was annoyed by the " ascen- 
dancy" of women, ** whose petty qualities 
were soured by the spirit of the salon . . . and 
the mockery of good society," and who cannot 
conceal " a certain Jacobin antipathy toward 
brilliant society;" ''his little body and big 



1 1 2 Madame de Stdel. 

head, his I know not what of awkwardness and 
arrogance, of disdain and of embarrassment, a 
combination of the bad grace oi 2, parvenu and 
the audacity of a tyrant;" "he cannot express 
himself in fluent language, ... he is only elo- 
quent to injure;" his genius is only "charla- 
tanism;" he "mystifies" the diplomats, and 
throws dust in the eyes of the military ; he is 
not even a hero, — at Marengo when the fate of 
the battle seemed desperate, he remained inac- 
tive, moved slowly about on his horse before 
the troops, " pensive, his head bowed, . . . 
more courageous in face of danger than in face 
of misfortune, making no effort, but waiting 
for fortune;" in fine, "throughout his nature 
there is a basis of vulgarity which even the 
enormity of his imagination will not always be 
able to hide." 

Add to her words her cabals with hostile or 
envious generals like Moreau and Bernadotte ; 
her indiscreet statements such as, " I was with 
the English minister when he received the con- 
ditions of the peace [of Amiens]; he read 
them aloud to those who were dining with 
him, and I cannot express the astonishment I 
felt at each article. England was to resign all 
her conquests ! " "I delayed my return to 
Paris so as not to be a witness of the grand 
fetes in honor of the peace." These are all 



'' Literature r 113 

manifestations of a belief which possessed her 
then and did not leave her until 18 15, after she 
had experienced two foreign invasions and the 
deception of two royalist restorations. Her 
idea was that Europe longed only to give 
peace to France along the Rhine frontier, and 
that France asked only to enjoy political lib- 
erty under a constitution modelled on that of 
England ; that there was only one obstacle in 
the way of the reign of justice and of happi- 
ness for the world, namely, Bonaparte himself. 
Madame de Stael would not go quite so far as 
to approve the attempts on the life of the First 
Consul, — these she was bound to condemn ; 
but she longed for Bonaparte's fall even at the 
price of the defeat of the French armies. 

Here was enough to make such a man as 
the First Consul beside himself. " She talks 
back in a way that does not suit me," said he. 
Necker published a book called "Recent Views 
on Politics and Finance." He " felt a desire to 
write against the tyranny of one, after having 
so long contested that of the multitude." He 
traced in perspective all the " scaffolding " of 
imperial monarchy. This article annoyed 
Bonaparte as much as Fontanes's famous " Par- 
allel between Caesar, Cromwell, Monk, and 
Bonaparte" had flattered him. He accused 
Madame de Stael of having led her father into 



114 Madame de Stdel. 

error concerning Parisian opinion, and he was 
in a rage. 

We must here make allowances for circum- 
stances, which were still of a revolutionary 
nature, and for the character of Bonaparte, 
which was more than despotic. But we must 
also allow for the necessity for absolute power 
and its conditions. Great leaders of men have 
never been patient with feminine cabals. Ma- 
dame de Guemene and Madame de Chevreuse 
made trial of this in the time of the great Car- 
dinal. One asks how Louis XIV. with his 
august politeness would have treated the 
grande dame who allowed herself to hold in 
Paris a court of Jansenists or a circle of bold 
spirits mixed with rebellious reformers. The 
gowns of the Port Royalists did not protect 
them from the brutality of the gejis darmes. 
Having conceded this point, enough still re- 
mains to convict Bonaparte's rage and pro- 
scriptions of bad taste and undue severity. So 
many decrees, police, soldiery, despatches, and 
big, swelling words, — all for a salon where 
people meet to talk ! 

" Quoi ! vous vous arretez aux songes d'lme femme ! " ^ 

One can hardly help smiling, at this distance 
of time, in thinking of the fury of the lion ex- 

1 " What ! you are stopped by a woman's dreams ! " 



'^Literature,'' lie 

asperated by the notes of the mocking-bird: 
the bird hops from branch to branch, flies 
away, and still keeps on singing; the Hon 
shakes his mane, rolls his eyes, foams at the 
mouth, paws the earth, and struggles in vain. 
Napoleon aggrandized Madame de Stael in 
raising her to the dignity of a powerful antag- 
onist; he belittled himself by the stress of the 
blows he dealt the empty air in his efforts to 
crush her. When Madame de Stael exhibits a 
theatrical depth of despair in exile, when she 
poses too complacently as the victim of trag- 
edy, as persecuted Andromache, she is never- 
theless playing her proper role; she suffers 
sincerely, and one really pities her. Napoleon 
loses majesty; he steps out of his part. His 
measures are odious, his imprecations ridicu- 
lous. In this struggle, which lasted ten years, 
Madame de Stael has the last word, and the 
word is that of a femme d' esprit. " What a 
cruel fame you give me ! " she wrote to Bona- 
parte in 1803; ''I shall have a few lines in 
your history." 

There were some preliminaries to the exile 
in the spring of 1802 ; namely, the interdiction 
of her sa/o7i and the quarantine of her friends. 
" What made my position more bitter was 
that the good people of France seemed to see 
in Bonaparte its preserver from anarchy or 



ii6 Madame de Stdel. 

Jacobinism. It blames strongly the spirit of 
opposition which I show toward him." " The 
good people deserted you at the same time as 
the favor of the government, — a situation in- 
supportable to a woman, and the bitterness of 
which no one can know without experience." 
*' I had need of yet greater strength to endure 
the persecution of society than to risk that of 
power. I have always retained a remembrance 
of one of those slights of the salon which 
French aristocrats know so well how to inflict 
on those who do not share their opinions." 

She does not exaggerate when she speaks of 
the bitternesses and the slights of the salon. The 
*' old-time courtiers had to make but one con- 
cession to Bonaparte, — merely that of changing 
masters." They did it the more zealously as 
they were less sincere and more selfish. Ma- 
dame de Stael thwarted their evolutions, and 
compromised the effects of their recantations. 
But one would ill judge them to say that they 
attacked either her writings or her convictions. 
That would have been to take too seriously 
her character of muse and superior woman. 
Men of quahty, and particularly women of the 
world, never troubled themselves about her 
supremacy even in jest. They had their own 
opinions of her. They attacked Madame de 
Stael on her vulnerable quarter, — her weak 



""^ Literaturer 117 

spots, the annoyances of her h'fe, her impru- 
dences, her lack of tact, her noisily displayed 
sentiments, her thirst for success, her dancing, 
her turban, her circle of bright wits, her train 
of gallants, and the supposed prodigality of 
her favors. In order to annihilate the writer 
they outraged the woman. 

In the midst of these events M. de Stael 
died. He had been regularly separated from 
his wife in 1798; he had always cherished the 
hope of recovering his embassy, and his wife's 
disgrace stood in the way. But he obtained 
nothing, after all. He was unhappy ; he longed 
to see his children again. Madame de Stael 
decided to meet him at Coppet. On the way 
he died, in the month of May, 1802. Madame 
de Stael was free. Her passion for Benjamin 
Constant was a secret to no one, and every 
one declared that they would marry. Love 
in marriage, which had been the dream of her 
youth, was still the burden of her writings. 
" What ! is it within the possibility of human 
things that such happiness should exist and 
yet earth know it not?" she writes in the 
book on " The Passions." '' Is this union of 
things possible, and yet to get it for oneself 
impossible? " 

But while she loved Benjamin Constant with 
a jealous ardor, while she could not endure the 



ii8 Madame de StdeL 

idea of existence without him, and, above all, 
of seeing him belong to another, she hesitated 
very much to bind her life to his. She would 
have him to lean upon, but she could not make 
up her mind to have him for a master. There 
was nothing in him of the subUme protector, 
the strong and gentle guide, which was her 
ideal. She feared that Benjamin would disturb 
the life she had marked out for herself, with- 
out conferring the inner happiness which was 
yet unknown to her. She clung to her rank 
of ambassadress, to her title of baroness, and 
to that name which she had rendered cele- 
brated. Benjamin, for his part, found more 
irksome than one could say his role of '' per- 
petual gallant" to a woman so sought after. 
He throned it beside her, but he also occupied 
a somewhat equivocal position there. For 
some time he had endured with impatience 
" the supernatural influence " which she exer- 
cised over him; he was irritated by his own 
shameful flights and his capitulating returns. 
Weary of her, he longed for more common- 
place loves, for the legitimate adoration of 
a docile wife, simple of heart, of limited in- 
tellect, but submissive. He imagined that in 
asking the hand of Madame de Stael he would 
provoke a refusal which would open a way 
of retreat. He asked it, but without urging ; 



'' Delphiner 119 

she refused, but without giving occasion for a 
repetition ; neither one cared for the union. 
And yet each bore the other a grudge, — she 
for not having been forced to consent, he for 
not having been taken at his word. They 
remained therefore painfully fixed in the 
interval between love and marriage ; they 
were miserable, but they could not extricate 
themselves. 

For Madame de Stael there remained one 
resource, — the consolation of those who are 
born with the pen in hand, — namely, to give to 
the world an account of their unjust sufferings 
and disgrace. She composed her romance of 
" Delphine," the most personal of her works, the 
one " in which she told everything," according 
to Madame Necker de Saussure, and in which 
she portrays *' the reality of her youth." " Can 
a woman's talent have any other object than to 
be loved a little more?" she said at this time 
to a friend. To make herself more beloved, 
and to defend herself; to show to the world 
that it is iniquitous, and that she is not the 
dupe of its false judgments ; and above all, to 
offer to all women who suffer the same ills 
the book announced in the treatise on "The 
Passions" and predicted in the treatise on 
*' Literature," this romance of life and of the 
future, the book that should truly unveil un- 



I20 Madame de St del, 

happiness, the book that should expose what 
others have always feared to represent, — the 
weaknesses, the miseries which follow in the 
train of great reverses, the enfiuis which despair 
does not cure, the disgust which the heel of 
suffering cannot kill, the contrast of petty and of 
noble sorrows, and all those contrasts and all 
those inconsequences which combine only for 
evil and tear all at once the same heart by every 
sort of pain, — that is the aim of '' Delphine; " 
the spirit of it is summed up in two lines by 
the epigraph : " A man should be able to 
brave opinion; a woman should submit to it." 
It was an accusation of her own self appar- 
ently, but by means of one of those splendid 
confessions which is at the same time an apol- 
ogy. The heroine is herself, rejuvenated, beau- 
tiful, more graceful, more attractive, more 
refined, and disassociated both from politics 
and literature. Delphine has but one adven- 
ture, and in this the heart alone is at stake. 
As to the hero, Leonce, he is again and always 
a veiled image of Guibert. Madame de Stael 
does not trouble herself to invent a Werther 
or a Saint-Preux. The new passions disen- 
thralled by the Revolution and nourished by 
war do not inspire her. The amorous 
Jacobin, the romantic warrior, the exile, the 
conspirator, — all the types common to the 



'' Delphine.'' 121 

romance of the morrow are strangers to her 
imagination. She paints what has attracted 
herself, but in ideahzing his person she does 
not make him more sympathetic. She adorns 
him with every seductive trait, and ascribes to 
him all the prejudices of the man of the world. 
But he speaks with more passionateness than 
he feels; he promises a happiness that he is 
incapable of giving. He is haughty, jealous, 
susceptible, sceptical, excepting on the point 
of honor, where he is finical, and on the mat- 
ter of opinion, — that is to say, tittle-tattle, — 
where he is pusillanimous. He adores Del- 
phine, who is noble, rich, virtuous, and he 
marries another woman because his mother 
has so ordered for him. He places Delphine 
above all other women, and at the same time 
he believes all the calumnies which the world 
lays at her door. She justifies herself; he for- 
gives, he repents, but he refuses to marry her 
by means of a divorce, because divorce is in 
bad taste. He offers her a compromise which 
he thinks will conciliate every one, — the world, 
love, and the conventionalities; he will elope 
with her, and go to live with her in a foreign 
land. Leonce is real, but he is intolerable. 
*'He has no love," says a friend of Delphine; 
'' all the evil is the result of that." That is 
his condemnation. 



122 Madame de St del. 

Delphine is imprudent without premedita- 
tion, and the chance is too disastrous for her. 
Yet the episodes of the novel, in spite of their 
monotony, are interesting. They are such 
things as happen, but only in a salon. There 
is no thought of the frame, the costume, or the 
coloring. The romance unfolds between the 
years 1790 and 1792; apart, however, from 
the arrest of Leonce, wrongly accused of bear- 
ing arms against France and finally shot, there 
is nothing to indicate the Revolution in this 
book, save some fine phrases on liberty, patri- 
otism, and the duties of a good Frenchman. 
The secondary characters are lifelike. Some 
have been pleased to see in them several of 
Madame de Stael's personal friends. They 
are, however, much involved and disguised, and 
it is misspent curiosity to look for their 
models. Perhaps we may except Madame de 
Vernon, the compelHng impulse of Delphine's 
life, who practises religion without beHeving 
in it and obeys prejudices while disapproving 
them. We may recognize Talleyrand in this 
very politic character. Indeed, there are sev- 
eral traces of the old bishop ; among others, 
this one, — the only revenge for her old friend's 
defection which Madame de Stael allowed her- 
self, — " Ingratitude," says Madame de Vernon, 
** is a great word, much abused. We use it 



'' Delphine!' 123 

because we delight in it, and when we have no 
more pleasure in it we use it no more. We do 
nothing in life but by calculation or taste. I 
do not see what gratitude can have to do 
either with the one or the other." 

Delphine is a literary romance, — "a class," 
says the author, ''which presupposes more 
sentiments than acts." In the order of senti- 
ments Madame de Stael lays too great stress on 
despair. One feels that she is herself given 
to these effusions, that she dotes on them, too 
often adding to them rather than concealing 
or controlling them. What we have in her 
own letters on the same subject is more con- 
cise and plainer; her own passion carries away 
the pen, and leaves it no time for dissertation. 
Madame de Stael weakens her inspiration in 
diffusing it; but the inspiration is genuine. 
For pathos and ardor some of Delphine's 
letters deserve to be compared with those of 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Madame de Stael 
did not see these letters until 1809; therefore 
she could not have imitated them. But the 
tone is the same, and when the letters of 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse appeared all the 
world was struck by it. There is the same 
ecstasy of love, the same heart-rending cry out 
of the same depths of woe, the same regrets in 
the sacrifice, and finally, to use a figure dear to 



124 Madame de StdeL 

the author, the same '' vulture's claw " which 
tears the heart when it grasps it in order to 
bear it away to heaven. 

The style of " Delphine" seems old, — that is, 
it seems to have once been young, — and that 
is also why it touched its contemporaries. The 
pedantic critic — and the critic in those times 
was narrowly pedantic — brought to light many 
a defect in this romance. Roederer, formerly 
so friendly, became severe in proportion as 
the consular disgrace spread around Madame 
de Stael. He hardly forgave her for making 
so much stir, and for hitting so keenly what 
he, with all his excellent theories, had only 
succeeded in hitting so lamely, without warmth 
or brilHance. He accused Madame de Stael 
of having no continuity or depth of ideas, of 
employing elliptical turns and abstract ex- 
pressions, of not seeking the exact word, the 
significant verb, or of not finding when she 
sought it. He says to her, '' It is the expres- 
sion which creates and fixes the thought." 
He sends her to Condillac ; and it was a good 
school, in truth. She replies to him, '* What 
do we understand by style? Is it not the 
coloring and movement of ideas? Do you 
mean that I lack eloquence, imagination, or 
sensibility?" 

She made her rhetoric to suit her own gen- 



''Delphine:' 125 

ius, which was of the nature of improvisation : 
" The style represents to the reader, so to speak, 
the bearing, the accent, the gestures of the one 
who addresses him." This is what she calls 
the style of soul and enthusiasm; in a word, 
written ecstasy. She makes a note of what- 
ever in her thoughts can be noted ; she never 
reproduces that which exactly pertains to style 
in her own discourses, — namely, the whirlwind 
of her eloquence, the sparkle of her superb 
eyes, her imperious accents, her persuasive 
gestures. ' She never troubles herself enough 
to supply these by means of the art of writing. 
She has movement, but she lacks color. I 
do not refer to color appHed with a brush, but 
to natural color, to those spontaneous meta- 
phors of language which animate a phrase as 
the flush of young blood animates the face. 

The purpose of Madame de Stael is to con- 
vince by rapidity of argument and to produce 
emotion by driving home to the heart. She 
does not try to paint. She said in relation to 
Montesquieu, who, to her mind, multipHed his 
figures too much : " In place of this figure, 
one dares to long for a thought of Tacitus or 
of the author himself, who oftentimes surpassed 
the best writers of antiquity." Shall we pause 
over her adjectives? The adjective is a matter 
of literary fashion and caprice. It will be the 



126 Madame de Stdel. 

venture of a book to-morrow, while it makes 
the charm of one to-day and was the ridicule 
of another yesterday. We have some that we 
abuse, and some that we caress, — as, Pari- 
sian, delicate, modern ; we have some that are 
ill-favored, — as, psychological. In the days of 
Madame de Stael sensible (sensitive or suscep- 
tible) was still the rage. She employs it on 
all occasions, in its proper sense, which never- 
theless makes us smile, — as, "■ to be the first 
object of a sensible man;" and then in all its 
phases of abuse, — as, ** his eloquence . . . sen- 
sible as his heart," " an air [of music] at once 
lively and sensible^' — and this last in a trans- 
lation from the English to render the word 
suave (sweet), which would have been well and 
good in its place. 

Her contemporaries did not perceive this; 
all the sensible souls of her time wept over 
'' Delphine," and the author's enemies raged at 
the success of the book. Even the " master " 
uttered his word upon it. ''The disorder of 
mind and imagination which rules this book 
excited his criticism," says the " Memorial." 
This gave the sign. The bureaucracy vied 
with one another in refinements on this theme. 
One journal announced facetiously a '* con- 
verted Delphine." Madame de Genlis, in the 
fervor of newly acquired virtue, accused the 



'' Delphiner 127 

author of corrupting morals. Fievee de- 
picted Madame de Stael as an old gossip 
seized with an excess of activity, " astride the 
sublime." " Delphine," he says, '* talks of love 
like a bacchante, of God like a Quaker, of 
death like a grenadier, and of morals like a 
sophist." 

These were so many warnings not to risk 
herself in France. Madame de Stael could 
not resign herself to believe in them. In the 
autumn of 1803 she set out for Paris. Her 
presence was heralded; she was the recipi- 
ent of some rather blustering visits. In spite of 
the friendship of Madame Recamier, who was 
still in favor, and in spite of the intervention 
of Joseph Bonaparte, she received, October 15, 
the order to withdraw forty leagues distant from 
the capital, — to Dijon, if she pleased. She 
preferred to travel. She had thought of this 
already, when her exile was announced. "Al- 
ways a little romantic, even in friendship," as 
she said, she wrote to Camille Jordan in 1802 
to accompany her to Italy. " To forget all 
that has weighed upon me for the last six 
months, to forget with you, whom I love 
deeply, beneath the beautiful skies of Italy, — 
together to admire the remains of a great 
people, to pour forth our tears upon those 
who succumbed before reaching true great- 



128 Madame de Sta'el. 

ness, — that would make me happy." Camiile, 
who was romantic only in his politics, decHned 
the invitation. Madame de Stael gave up the 
project and turned toward Germany. She 
thought that this journey might be beneficial 
to her elder son. Germany attracted her. She 
desired, according to the words of one of her 
friends, '' to go and see for herself those great 
geniuses," Goethe and Schiller, then at the 
height of their glory. She had a secret mo- 
tive behind all this, — "I wished to contrast 
the friendly reception of the ancient dynasties 
with the impertinence of him who was preparing 
to subjugate France." She departed with her 
children in December, 1803 ; visited Charles de 
Villers at Metz, — *' Kant's Villers," as he was 
called, — who laid out an itinerary for her; 
then she proceeded by way of Frankfort to 
Weimar, where Benjamin Constant rejoined her 
in January. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Journeys to Germany and Italy.— -"Corinne." 
1 804-1 80 7. 

SHE attained her end. She wandered 
through the land of enthusiasm ; she 
became acquainted with the " great geniuses ; " 
she was treated by princes as an illustrious vic- 
tim, and she provided the agents of Napoleon 
with material for reports wherewith they cur- 
ried the favor of their master while irritating 
him with the recital of his enemy's successes. 

Weimar was hardly a State ; it was a court 
and a theatre. Goethe ruled the theatre, and 
Schiller was the ornament of the court. Here 
was hardly the constitution dreamt of by 
Madame de Stael; but intellect compensated 
for whatever was lacking in the institutions. 
Yet this was for a long time as a closed book 
to her. In spite of the attractions which both 
heart and imagination promised her, in spite 
of a something Germanic which she seemed 
to have inherited from her ancestors, — a race 
affinity which Goethe noted at once and which 
9 



130 Madame de StdeL 

predisposed her intuitively to Germany in gen- 
eral, — the sense of the words fell short of 
her, and, further still, the sentiment of things. 
She was not satisfied to have the phrases 
translated to her, or to translate them herself; 
in substituting the French term for the Ger- 
man she seemed to substitute with it the ideas 
and images born in the mind of a Parisian ac- 
customed to the high life of the old regimey 
for the ideas and images which contemplation 
of Nature and a life at once very meditative 
and very studious had developed in Goethe, 
Schiller, and their contemporaries. It was an 
entirely different conception of humanity, of 
love, of woman's place in the world, and of 
woman's destiny. 

Their dissentient opinions clashed still more. 
As to the Revolution, the Germans pronounced 
it distorted by its authors; as to Bonaparte, 
they considered the First Consul the very per- 
sonification of the practical and legitimate out- 
come of the Revolution ; as to liberty, they de- 
nied to the French even the understanding of 
the word ; and as to morality, they almost con- 
tested their very consciousness of it. " Ma- 
dame de Stael has no notion whatever of duty," 
said Goethe, after having read " Delphine " and 
the treatise on *'The Passions." These Germans 
cared little for the establishment of a free State 



JoMrneys to Germany and Italy, 131 

and the promulgation of laws fit to form vir- 
tuous citizens. Liberty for them consisted in 
the independent development, of the intelli- 
gence, and virtue in the wholesome self-con- 
trol of the soul. Liberty and virtue, conceived 
in this sort, were each one's private affair; 
character was everything with them, institutions 
nothing. Public affairs were the affairs of the 
State, and did not concern these savants and 
poets. To obey the powers that be so as to 
have leisure to think freely in the tribunal of 
the mind, — this was their plan of life, and they 
saw in it no contradiction. " They are ener- 
getic flatterers," said Madame de Stael, ** and 
vigorously submissive, . . . employing philo- 
sophical reasoning to explain the most unphi- 
losophical thing in the world, — respect for 
might" 

They expected to see in her a phenomenon, 
and surrounded her with prejudices which her 
character did not tend to diminish. Her best 
qualities, her greatest charms, her sparkling 
conversation, her eloquence, her marvellous 
suppleness of mind, lost much in intercourse 
with foreigners. They not only were not in 
touch, but in order to reach and maintain that 
relation, they had to exert a continual effort of 
attention, to suffer an embarrassment which 
paralyzed their thoughts. " If she only under- 



132 Madame de StdeL 

stands German," wrote Schiller, *' we shall get 
the upper hand ; but if we must offer our deep- 
est religion in French phrases and struggle 
with French volubility, that will be really too 
hard." That volubility which dazzled Paris 
very nearly bewildered Weimar. Moreover, 
they had their own habits, methods, work, 
hours of relaxation and of reflection, — a regu- 
larly laid out life of thinkers, — which they 
disliked to see disturbed by this meteor. 

With her insatiable desire to spread her 
ideas, her impatient curiosity concerning the 
ideas of others, Madame de Stael wanted to 
fill every moment. She could not beheve that 
others did not take at all the same interest in 
her discourse that she did herself. She en- 
deavored to explain Germany, its genius and 
literature, by the men who understood French 
but imperfectly, or who, like Goethe, knew 
it, but spoke it with difficulty. Nothing was 
farther from their conception of intellectual 
life than this pretence of learning everything 
by intercourse in which she did most of the 
talking, and the reduction of everything through 
the medium of conversation. ** I understand 
everything worth understanding, and what I 
do not comprehend has no existence," she 
said to a friend who served as her interpreter, 
and who declared that she would never under- 



yourneys to Germany and Italy, 133 

stand Goethe. In regard to this great poet in 
particular she had an added fear of being mys- 
tified and of being duped. She was always 
on guard before him. He was absent from 
Weimar when Madame de Stael arrived, and 
he had to be much coaxed to return. 

The effect which Madame de Stael produced 
on the court and city of Weimar has been 
compared to the invasion of an ant-hill by a 
squirrel. She was immediately invited to the 
palace, and there treated on an intimate foot- 
ing. Perhaps it was there that she was most 
indulged. She met Schiller there for the first 
time at tea with the Duchess. He was in the 
uniform of the court; she took him for a 
general. He was presented to her, and she 
straightway drew him into conversation on the 
superiority of French tragedy. It was one of 
her favorite themes, and her talent for declama- 
tion furnished her with the best of arguments. 
The Germans gladly heard her recitations and 
applauded her; but she did not at all convert 
them to the worship of Racine. She com- 
pelled admiration, but she fatigued. " She is 
all of a piece," wrote Schiller ; " there is noth- 
ing false or sickly in her, —which has the result 
that in spite of the enormous difference in na- 
ture and manner of thought, one is perfectly 
at ease with her; one can understand all she 



134 Madame de Stdel, 

wishes to convey, and can say anything to her. 
She represents French culture in all its en- 
tirety; nature and sentiment go for more with 
her than metaphysics, and her fine intellect 
rises to the power of genius. ... As to what we 
call poetry, she has no idea of it ; she cannot 
apprehend in works of that kind the passionate, 
oratorical, universal qualities." Then followed 
certain reservations: "The astonishing volu- 
bility of her speech : one must be all ears to 
follow her. . . . She desires to explain, to pene- 
trate, to measure everything; she admits of 
nothing obscure or inaccessible ; and where she 
cannot flash the light of her own torch, nothing 
exists for her." " We are in a state of per- 
petual mental tension," adds Charlotte Schiller; 
''when one wishes to collect oneself one must 
go back over the subjects, look for the traces, 
and gather up one's wits. It is perpetual 
motion; she wishes to know and see every- 
thing." 

And all this by chance and in the current of 
the improvisations of the table or the salon, 
broaching by preference the most insolvable 
problems, the great mysteries of the soul and 
of passion, which, said Goethe, " should never 
be questioned except between God and man ; " 
discussing and deciding them with a fine emo- 
tion or a clear eloquence, always in haste to 



Journeys to Germany and Italy, 135 

get to the end of it, always ready to put the 
same question to-morrow and to begin over 
again. She shocked these men of slower and 
more sustained thought, who were forever dis- 
cussing and never coming to any conclusions. 
She demanded that they should produce their 
machinery, analyze themselves, explain them- 
selves and their works on the wing, so to 
speak, and at first sight. Schiller lost his 
patience. '' I seem to myself to be recovering 
from an illness," he said when she went away. 

Finding herself one day in company with 
Fichte, she said to him, " Tell me, M. Fichte, 
could you in a very short time, in a quarter 
of an hour for example, give me an epitome of 
your system, and explain to me what you mean 
by your word me I It is very obscure to me." 
Fichte had spent all his life in hatching this 
word and evolving its surprising metamor- 
phoses. The question seemed to him imper- 
tinent. Nevertheless, he was gallant enough 
to endeavor to please her. But he had to 
translate himself into French, and the effort 
almost caused him a bloody sweat. He had 
not spoken ten minutes, when Madame de 
Stael cried out: "Enough, M. Fichte, quite 
enough ! I understand you marvellously well. 
I have seen your system in an illustration ; it 
is one of the adventures of Baron Munchausen." 



136 Madame de StdeL 

The philosopher struck a tragic attitude, and 
a great chill fell upon the whole assembly. 

This is an example of the grounds on which 
the Germans denied her intelligence; she, on 
her part, denied them any knowledge of the 
life of the world : " There is no shade of com- 
parison between what we call society in 
France and this. And I am not surprised 
that in Germany savants have more time for 
study than anywhere else, for the attractions of 
society have no existence there." Time, which 
she held so cheaply and which she was always 
in such haste to get rid of, was to her hosts the 
most precious thing in hfe. She robbed them 
of some of it, and this was what made her most 
annoying to them. 

Goethe seemed to her just about as Ben- 
jamin Constant has described him at that 
epoch, — having "shrewdness, self-esteem, 
physical irritability that amounts to torment, a 
remarkable presence, a keen glance, a coarse 
and ignoble face ; " Werther grown fat, and the 
crow's-foot planted on the temples of that 
Olympian head ! This was a disappointment. 
" I would like to put his mind into another 
body," she wrote ; " it is inconceivable that 
so superior a mind should be so ill lodged." 
She said to him, *' I should like to steal from 
you all that can be stolen; that would leave 



journeys to Germany and Italy. 137 

you still very rich." As he shrank back, she 
continued, "■ If I were to establish myself here, 
you might do well to treat me like all the 
world ; but fifteen days — could you not devote 
so much time to me? " This was demanding 
the thing of which Goethe was least prodigal ; 
he made use of his genius as he made use of 
all earthly powers, and he economized it. 

In the month of March she left Weimar for 
Berlin. This *' focus of lights " charmed her by 
the spirit of justice which she saw in the State, 
and the independence of character which she 
observed in individuals. It seemed to her, 
however, that the famous " Spur of Prussia," 
the nation's great mainspring, was becoming 
sensibly dull, that he spent too much time in 
military parades and diplomatic affairs. She 
obtained as tutor for her sons Wilhelm 
Schlegel. He became her principal interpre- 
ter of German ideas, and helped her to assimi- 
late what she had been gathering by the way. 
It was at Berlin that she learned of the con- 
spiracy of Georges and the murder of the 
Due d'Enghien. In her memoirs she lays the 
conspiracy to Fauriel ; she brings in too many 
police and too few assassins. She passes judg- 
ment like a historian and a politician on the 
affairs of Vincennes ; she knew perfectly well 
the men whom Bonaparte meant to strike by 



138 Madame de StdeL 

this terrible example: *'The moment that he 
desired to be called emperor he felt the neces- 
sity of reassuring, on the one hand, the revo- 
lutionaries against the possibility of the return 
of the Bourbons, and of proving, on the other 
hand, to the royalists that in attaching them- 
selves to him they broke from the ancient 
dynasty forever." 

The arrest of a prince at Ettenheim did not 
leave her without personal uneasiness. This 
idea carried her back toward Coppet ; and 
the worst blow she could experience finally 
recalled her there. She learned that her father 
was seriously ill; she departed hastily and 
found him dead. He had succumbed on the 
loth of April. Madame de Stael now ex- 
perienced a grief worse than all the sufferings 
of love, in the loss of the person who even 
in those sufferings offered her the truest con- 
solation. " While my father lived I suffered 
only in imagination ; . . . after his loss I had 
to deal with fate directly and alone." 

She set herself valiantly to the work. As 
a zealous mother she was already interested in 
the education of her children, and she occu- 
pied herself about their fortune with a provi- 
dent eye to their future. She seemed in this 
latter work, which was so repugnant to her 
taste, to be inspired by the thought of her 



Journeys to Germany and Italy, 139 

father ; and she gave him the worshipful 
praise which she had felt for him from her 
childhood. 

About the same time and under the same 
influence she began to feel some religious 
emotion in her soul. She had always recog- 
nized the social necessity of faith, and she now 
felt the personal need of it and a desire for 
its support. She spent the entire summer in 
composing the eulogy entitled ** The Charac- 
ter and Private Life of M. Necker." It is a 
sincere and touching effort, a more personal 
version of the first part of the ** Considera- 
tions." Then, when life became too difficult 
for her at Coppet, she tried a new diversion, 
and set out in November for Italy. 

Benjamin Constant had felt himself com- 
pelled to go to her in her calamity ; he never 
knew to what extent he deceived her in so 
apparently pitying her and weeping with her. 
Most certainly he saw her depart from Coppet 
with a light heart, and never thought of follow- 
ing her. She would like to have taken Camille 
Jordan with her : '* You will not be alone with 
me, for I have my three children and their ex- 
cellent tutor. You will do an act of charity to 
one whose soul is cruelly wounded." But Ca- 
mille feared shipwreck. He loved not sea and 
tempest save at a safe distance, say from the 



140 Madame de Stdel, 

observatory of Lucrece ; and this time, as be- 
fore, he stayed at home. 

A voyage without company — that is to say, 
without conversation — seemed to Madame de 
Stael " one of the saddest pleasures in Hfe." 
" To travel over unknown countries, to hear a 
language of which we understand little, to see 
human faces that have no relation to your 
past or to your future, is solitude and isolation 
without peace or dignity; for this haste to 
arrive where none awaits you, this agitation 
which has curiosity as its sole cause, inspires 
you with little self-respect." Goethe thought 
her incapable of comprehending Italy. He 
was mistaken ; but his conversations, which the 
sight of the objects recalled to Madame de 
Stael, contributed singularly to open her eyes 
to them. Sismondi, Wilhelm von Humboldt, 
and Bonstetten, whom she met, served her as 
interpreters of the past, and explained to her 
its great souls. At Milan she established with 
the sombre and stormy poet Monti one of 
those exalted friendships which in her dis- 
courses and letters so easily took the name of 
love. She visited the Countess of Albany. 
The Queen of Naples, Maria Carolina of Aus- 
tria, gave her a reception which ought greatly 
to have flattered her. She had more reason for 
being gratified with the solemn reception offered 



yotirneys to Germany and Italy, 141 

her at the Capitol by the Academy of Arca- 
dians ; she Hstened to a Latin sonnet composed 
in her honor, and read with emotion a trans- 
lation, somewhat mediocre to be sure, which 
she made in French verse of a sonnet on the 
death of Jesus Christ by Minzoni. 

This journey was a revelation of Nature to 
her to a degree in which she could feel its 
beauties. "■ One sees the sea and Vesuvius, 
and one forgets then all one knows of men," 
says Corinne; and Corinne is in her proper 
role. But Madame de Stael on her part had 
rather less enthusiasm for it. " If it were not a 
simple human duty," she confessed to a friend, 
" I would not open my window for a first view 
of the Bay of Naples half as soon as I would 
travel five hundred leagues to talk with a 
clever man whom I do not know." She did 
not go about Italy, like Chateaubriand, looking 
for imagery ; what she brought back was only 
got at second hand, conjured at command and 
cut out in relief without light and shade. She 
preferred to simple Nature what she called the 
historic lands. Italy charmed her with its 
ruins and the magnificent setting she provided 
for the tragedies of the soul. The Italians in- 
terested but did not charm her. She noted 
the ease of their customs, the facility with 
which among them one gains entrance to the 



142 Madame de StdeL 

world, leaves, re-enters, becomes known, and 
is forgotten in turn ; agreeable customs for the 
passions, and natural in a country where they 
think of nothing but love. But, she observes, 
though they are always thinking of love, they 
reflect upon it but rarely, and they practise it 
too sincerely to find pleasure in analyzing it. 
She finds in this nation a combination of sim- 
plicity and corruption, of dissimulation and 
frankness, of kindness and cruelty, of weakness 
of character and strength of passion ; nothing 
is done for vanity's sake, and much for interest. 
It seemed to her, however, that the genius of a 
great people brooded over this country, and 
she longed to behold its awakening. 

She returned to Coppet in June, 1805. She 
was thirty-nine years of age; youth had fled, 
and Paris was closed to her. To remind her- 
self of the life which she loved so wildly and 
which seemed to get on so easily without her, 
to recover possession of herself at this turn of 
life from which she felt herself about to be 
hurled, and where nothing remains for women 
but " sad regrets for the days when they were 
beloved," she wrote " Corinne." For a setting 
she gave it England, w^hich she had visited 
twelve years previously, and Italy, from which 
she had just returned; for subject, the eternal 
problem of the destiny of women of genius. 



" Corinner 143 

the contrasts of glory and love ; for a heroine 
herself carried to sublime heights, but always 
recognizable by her beautiful arms, her im- 
posing figure, her inspired brow, her flashing 
eyes, her hair of the most beautiful black " in- 
tertwined with an Indian schall or scarf wound 
about her head," by the irresistible outbursts 
of her heart, and by the enchanting flow of her 
speech. It is indeed herself; and she is all 
there, even to the dress and the turban. She 
adds what she herself lacks, — beauty of face 
and the charm of mystery. She knows too well 
what a woman compromises and loses in de- 
scending from her Olympus. 

Corinne is " a divinity enveloped in clouds, 
... a woman of whom everybody is speaking 
and whose real name no one knows." She 
seeks not renown, ** save to have one more 
charm in the eyes of him whom she loves." She 
makes for herself a life without and above the 
world, yet she dreads the world ; ** she trem- 
bles at the idea " that the man she loves " may 
immolate others and himself on the altar of 
opinion." She aspires to happiness in love. 
If she. needs " a theatre where she may rise to 
her full height," it is because her fate wills that 
she should be loved only amid the triumphs of 
the stage. Madame de Stael thus criticises, 
excuses, and glorifies in her heroine the ro- 



144 Madame de Stdel. 

mantle and poetic side of her own character. 
Corinne is nowhere so noble and so touching 
as during her sad journey through England, 
when she follows the man who has taken pos- 
session of her heart, and drags herself in his 
footsteps amid the grief of abandonment. One 
concludes of the author as the heroine con- 
cludes of herself: " I examine myself some- 
times as a stranger might do, and I pity my- 
self I was once spiritual, true, good, generous, 
sensible; why do all these so easily turn to 
evil? Is the world really bad? And do these 
take away our defences in certain qualities in- 
stead of giving us strength? " 

In the hero of the romance, Nelvil, Madame 
de Stael presents herself again in a certain 
way, giving to him her moral views, her social 
qualities, the Necker side of her nature, and 
the more religious and conservative side of her 
mind. These also make up Nelvil's best side. 
The rest is mediocre. Madame de Stael be- 
trays in him, as in L^once, her inferior idea of 
men. She believes that a woman can never be 
happy save in adoring her master ; she never 
found her own. She had met with but one ruler 
of souls, and in him she detested the tyrant of 
her life. The men whom she knew were all 
nervous, effeminate, roii^Sy sceptics, weak, or 
ungrateful. Oswald, Lord Nelvil, a peer of 



" Corinner 145 

Scotland, Is a prey to spleen and threatened 
with phthisis. '* At twenty-five he was dis- 
couraged with life, his spirit divined everything 
in advance, and his wounded sensibiHties took 
no more pleasure In the heart's illusions. He 
hoped to find in the strict devotion to his 
duties and in the renunciation of lively pleas- 
ures a safeguard against the sorrows that rend 
the soul." He appears enveloped in a volumi- 
nous, dark, floating cloak, which is the mascu- 
line equivalent of Corinne's turban. He seems 
imposing and haughty because of his shy re- 
serve. He is especially irresolute; he hates 
*' irrevocable matters." " Always honest, al- 
ways profound and passionate, he Is neverthe- 
less always ready to renounce the object of his 
affections, ... to exchange the vague dreams 
of romantic happiness for the satisfactions of 
the real blessings of life, independence, and 
security ; " add to this a blond wife, obedient 
and rich, a seat in Parliament, and a position 
in the great world. The slave of cant, submis- 
sive to his father, as was L^once to the opin- 
ion and caprice of his mother. Otherwise very 
English, as Leonce was very French. L6once, 
a thorough gentleman, pushes his respect for 
conventionalities to the length of proposing to 
run away with Delphine and make her his 
mistress, rather than marry her by means of a 



146 Madame de St del. 

divorce. Nelvil abandons Corinne, whom he 
will neither seduce nor marry; but he professes 
to think that " even infidelity is more moral in 
England than marriage in Italy." Leonce was 
half a fool; Nelvil was half a snob. Both are 
insipid and have no idea of loving. 

The secondary personages in " Corinne " are 
entirely original, particularly the English. The 
pictures of the province and the society amid 
which Nelvil lives are still vivid. The two 
Frenchmen in the book are drawn from the 
first exiles, — one, D'Erfeuil, lively and practical, 
the reasoner of the drama, who holds that love 
passes away, blame remains, and that there are 
no faults that are not pardonable except lack 
of tact and conformity ; the other, Raimond, 
Philinte in exile, in whom we seem to rec- 
ognize the generous soul of Mathieu de 
Montmorency. 

''Corinne" is a complex work. The ro- 
mance unfolds amid the incidents of a journey, 
and the study of sentiments is mingled with 
meditations on history. We prefer nowadays 
a more definite treatment of subject. Stendhal 
has set the example by a division of his studies 
of Italy. He has thrown his passions into a 
romance entitled "La Chartreuse de Parme;" 
and his reflections on history and art into a 
collection of notes called " Promenades about 



" Corinner 147 

Rome." In Madame de Stael's time the mixed 
character of '' Corinne " was an added attrac- 
tion. Otherwise the composition of the work 
is stronger and the connection is closer than 
in " Delphine." We must make allowance for 
the tone of the discourses ; it was in the fashion, 
which does not regulate merely our costumes. 
The expressions seem to us emphatic; the 
acts and sentiments are natural. The disser- 
tations do not interrupt the narrative, except- 
ing in the case of the study, a la Montesquieu, 
of the government of Venice ; it comes in the 
midst of the most pathetic crisis, and there 
is but one reason for it, — the author had 
written her piece and could find no other 
place to put it. The very numerous passion- 
ate scenes are better written than those in 
*' Delphine." But one is disconcerted by the 
superabundance of apostrophes, and too often 
brought to a halt by the author's moral re- 
flections. These were in her time, however, 
the ornaments and illustrations of the romance. 
They formed its charm, and they are neither 
more misplaced nor more disproportioned in 
" Corinne " than are, in the romances of to-day, 
the descriptions of any number of things which 
are unimportant to the scene, or the landscapes 
which the hero never looks at. The heroes 
of romance in 1805 carried about with them 



148 Madame de St del. 

a philosopher who reasoned out all their ad- 
ventures. The heroes of to-day carry about a 
troup of parasites, who because they discourse 
upon something else besides morals are not on 
that account less tiresome or more entertaining. 
" Oswald," says Corinne to her friend, " you 
do not love the arts for themselves, but merely 
for the sake of their relations with sentiment 
or intellect." Here speaks Goethe by the 
mouth of Corinne. Madame de Stael thinks 
like Nelvil, and writes as he thinks. Her de- 
scriptions are sober, with an effort at insight 
and without picturesqueness. They are the 
reverse of Chateaubriand's. Nothing marks 
more plainly the scope and the limitations of 
the genius of these two writers than the com- 
parison of the two pictures of " Corinne " and 
the " Martyrs," or, better still, of the " Lettres 
a Fontanes." Chateaubriand is everywhere 
visible. His first object is to make his pres- 
ence known; the second, to spread over all the 
riches of his palette. If he meditates upon 
the destiny of bygone empires, it is to show 
the surprising relation between the ruin of the 
greatest things in the world and the inevitable 
annihilation of his own person. Madame de 
Stael's heroes consider the world from a higher 
plane, they look farther away; they see objects 
with less relief and color, but they reflect, as 



" Corinner 149 

it were within their souls, upon the burdens of 
souls that have passed away, and they are 
filled with a great pity for the world in con- 
templation of life's great decay. 

*' Rome sleeps amid her ruins," writes Cha- 
teaubriand. *'That star of night, that orb 
which we suppose to be a world that is dead 
and unpeopled, takes its pale course in soli- 
tude above the solitudes of Rome. It lights 
the uninhabited streets, enclosures, squares, and 
gardens where no one passes ; the monasteries 
where one hears no more the voice of the 
monks ; the cloisters which are as deserted as 
the portals of the Coliseum." This is the 
voice of Rene ; now listen to Corinne : " Even 
the degradation of this Roman people is im- 
posing still. Her mourning for liberty covers 
the world with marvels ; and the genius of ideal 
beauty seeks to console man for the material, 
visible dignity which he has lost." Chateau- 
briand is present at the service of the Tenkbres 
at the Sistine Chapel. " Were you not there 
with me?" he writes to a lady whom he 
loves in a profane sense. '' I love even the 
wax lights which, when the flame was extin- 
guished, exhaled a white smoke, — symbol of a 
hfe suddenly gone out. Rome is a beautiful 
place in which to forget, to ignore, to die." Ma- 
dame de Stael comforts herself in another way 



I50 



Madame de StdeL 



on the same themes, and Hfts her heart toward 
the hope of another Hfe : '' The last piece 
leaves in the depths of the soul a sweet and 
pure impression. May God grant us this same 
impression before we come to die ! . . . When 
the last sound has died away, all take their de- 
parture slowly and noiselessly; each seems to 
dread to re-enter into the vulgar interests of 
this world. ... If we are passing through this 
world toward heaven, what better can we do 
than lift up our souls, so that they may catch 
a breath of the infinite, the invisible, and the 
eternal amid all the limitations that hedge 
us in?" 

Madame de Stael is an emotional thinker; 
Chateaubriand is a marvellous artist. The 
poems which Madame de Stael gives us as 
the works of Corinne have something foreign 
about them; this cold and abstract prose has 
the air of translation. Nothing of Corinne's 
recalls even faintly the beautiful cantilene of 
Cymodocee : *' Swift ships of Ausonie, cleave 
the calm and brilliant sea." Even the most 
beautiful passages seem to be at second-hand : 

" Do you know the land where the orange-trees 
bloom, and which the heaven's rays fecundate with 
love ? Have you heard the melodious sounds which 
chant the sweetness of the nights ? Have you breathed 



^^ Corinne^ 151 

those perfumes, the luxury of the air already so sweet 
and so pure ? Answer, strangers ! is Nature with you 
so beautiful and kind?" 

There is movement here ; but it is a move- 
ment of Goethe, and the imitation is plainly 
seen. ''I feel myself a poet," says Corinne, "not 
only when a happy choice of rhymes or har- 
monious syllables or a happy combination of 
images dazzles the hearers, but when my soul 
rises, and when from those heights it disdains 
egoism and baseness, and when indeed a fine 
action becomes easier to me." The " harmo- 
nious syllables " and the images were left be- 
hind in Corinne's Italian manuscript. We have 
only the ecstasies, which are the property of 
Madame de Stael. This especially appears in 
the conversations. Then the author herself 
speaks. The colloquies upon Italian hterature 
in Book VII., on poetry in Book III., on the 
tombs in Book IV., and the walks about Rome, 
give one, perhaps, according to her contem- 
poraries, the best idea of the conversations of 
Madame de Stael. 

" Corinne " stands in literature not as a mas- 
terpiece, — there is too great length of narra- 
tive, too much of fashion in the style, — but 
as a fine example of poetic genius such as it 
was conceived of in those days. " Corinne " 



152 Madame de Stdel. 

was, to a whole generation of generous, ro- 
mantic, and passionate men and women, the 
book of love and of the ideal. It was a reve- 
lation of Italy to many French people. It 
made Italy for years the land of lovers and the 
cherished end of all voyages of happiness. 

The book was completed in France. Napo- 
leon was at war with Germany. Fouche, more 
sceptical and more hardened than his master, 
took women's acts less seriously, and persisted 
in believing Madame de Stael a virago more 
malignant afar than near. He allowed her to 
advance to Auxerre in April, 1806. She was 
seen wandering outside Paris, restless and flit- 
ting, but always indiscreet and never out of 
view. She approached as near as Cernay, 
which she bought for the purpose of establish- 
ing herself there, and ventured under an incog- 
nito even into Paris. Her appearance was 
made known to the Emperor, and he found 
time to be angry about it. *' This woman is 
like a crow," he wrote to Fouche in May, 1807. 
** She thought the tempest had already come 
and feasted herself on intrigues and follies. 
. , . Let her go back to her own Leman," or 
else " I will put her under the orders of the 
ge^idarmerie, and then I shall be sure that she 
will not return with impunity to Paris." Ma- 
dame de Stael beat a retreat step by step. 



''' Corinne'' i53 

always hoping against hope for a return of 
fortune. While she was on her way to Swit- 
zerland, " Corinne " appeared. Its success was 
immense and was echoed over Europe. Ma- 
dame de Stael returned to Coppet covered with 
glory. Exile being apparently unavoidable, 
she took pains to make it heard of, and, like 
Voltaire at Ferney aforetime, to blind her per- 
secutors by its brilliancy. 



CHAPTER V. 

Life at Coppet. — The Book on Germany. — 
The Censor and the Police. — M. de Rocca. — 
The Flight. 

1806-1812. 

THIS is the epoch consecrated to Coppet; 
and considering that these were years of 
exile, they were nevertheless not years either of 
isolation or of mourning. Numbers of distin- 
guished persons made the journey thither to 
admire Corinne, to listen to her and compas- 
sionate her. None passed through Switzerland 
without stopping either at Coppet or Ouchy, 
where she dwelt by turns. Among those who 
appeared there were Augustus of Prussia and 
the Duchess of Courlande ; Madame Recamier 
and her court of adorers; among the more 
intimate, Prosper de Barante, Mathieu de 
Montmorency, Elzear de Sabran, and le 
Baron de Voght; a Russian, M. de Balk, 
whose " oriental imagination and evangelical 
wings " Madame de Stael admired, and whom 
she loved " with a friendship so tender that she 
thought it supernatural ; " Zacharias Werner, 
"the apostle and professor of love ; " Monti, who, 



Life at Coppet. 155 

a ritalienne, exercised the same apostleship; 
Sismondi and Bonstetten; young Guizot, who 
was merely a passer-by, but made a deep im- 
pression by his beautiful voice in reciting by 
heart the philippics of Chateaubriand : " It is 
in vain that Nero prospers ; Tacitus is already 
born to the empire ! " and lastly, Schlegel, the 
intellectual factotum of the household, and 
Benjamin Constant, the capricious tenor of 
this rare company of intellectual artists. 

Madame de Stael made a great effort to 
keep them all in harmony and to make each 
one do his part in the concert. The task was 
not an easy one ; they were rivals at all points, 
and Corinne's favor must be most delicately 
bestowed. Benjamin detested Schlegel; in his 
notes he makes him out a grotesque and 
vulgar German pedant. Schlegel had a con- 
tempt for Benjamin, and looked askance at 
Sismondi, who in turn considered him a fool. 
Madame de Stael showed herself full of solici- 
tude for them; she flattered them, sought 
opportunity to make them shine, and soothed 
their wounded vanities. But whether they 
would or no, they must contribute to amuse her, 
must be always ready with a reply, must be 
always ready to talk, and always disposed at 
any hour to strike off sparks. She was kind 
but exacting, imperious and absorbing, like 



156 Madmne de Stdel. 

Bonaparte, in her attachments and her tastes ; 
monopolizing even misfortunes, — " the am- 
bassadress who engrosses everything," said 
one contemporary. They began to talk in the 
morning at eleven-o'clock breakfast; they re- 
sumed at dinner, then in the garden or while 
taking a carriage-drive ; again between dinner 
and supper, '* entre chien et loup," then at sup- 
per, finally at eleven o'clock, and continued 
far into the night. Sismondi, who was other- 
wise much fascinated, came away " stunned by 
these everlasting passages at arms." 

As at Weimar, though on a much smaller 
stage, the theatre occupied the principal place 
in this little court. Madame de Stael enjoyed 
this. Said one of her adorers : " She is a 
tragedy character; she must receive and dis- 
pense crowns." Her performance was uneven, 
dependent upon inspiration, but singularly 
poignant and pathetic. *' The harmony of 
verse," she says, ** the charm of attitude, lend 
to passion what it lacks in reality, dignity and 
grace." In appearing in her favorite charac- 
ters, Merope, Andromaque, Zaire, Alzire, 
Hermione, Phedre, she appeared " august and 
unfortunate," and seemed to say with Corinne, 
" Behold, how I am capable of loving ! " She 
wrote *' Hagar" and the *' Shunamite," which 
she played with her daughter and melted the 



Life at CoppeL 157 

gallery to tears. Her friends wrote and de- 
claimed tragedies. Guizot here made his debut. 
Benjamin Constant aspired to be the first 
person in this illustrious theatre; and of all the 
objects of his life this perhaps seriously occu- 
pied him the longest. 

His liaison with Madame de Stael became 
more and more stormy, and he seemed to grow 
more and more enervated by it. In 1804 
during the journey to Germany, and in 1805 
during that to Italy, he had intended to break 
it off. Yet he returned again and again; 
scarcely once more returned than he was 
seized with the longing for flight. Madame de 
Stael was approaching the sharp crisis of the 
heart. Benjamin suffered her " monotonous 
lamentations, not for things real, but for the 
general laws of Nature and old age." She 
fought against age; he mocked at it. He 
sent this woman, who was terrified by love's 
neglect, to her own treatise on " The Passions," 
which she had never realized as being more 
than a rhetorical play. " What can others do 
against your contrary desires? " said he to her. 
''You will not suffer, yet you spread your 
wings ; you are determined to brave the winds, 
you run against the trees, you bruise yourself 
against the rocks. I can do nothing for you, 
alas ! Until you furl your sails there is no 



158 Madame de Stdel 

hope for you ! " He could indeed do nothing. 
He loved her no longer. He flew into a passion 
under this reproach : *' Love after ten years of 
association, when I have already sworn two 
hundred times that it no longer exists ! " There 
ensued ''some frightful scenes." She wrote to 
Benjamin " such letters as one would not write 
even to a highway assassin." He spoke of her 
in his private notes in terms which outdid by a 
great length the barrack diatribes of Napoleon. 
Benjamin, out of the scorn of his own absurd 
conduct, obtained a stimulus for his vanity; he 
flayed himself alive, and painted himself, dis- 
sected and desiccated, as " Adolphe." Mean- 
while during his sprees in Paris he busied him- 
self with " raising up a fallen daughter," or, as 
he says, " a child of the demi-monde," who was 
an admirer of Jean Jacques and made pilgri- 
mages to Ermenonville. He plans to marry 
every young person who crosses his pathway. 
He longs for a ''pure marriage ; " and this wish 
leads him to the feet of a German, Charlotte 
de Hardenberg, divorced from her first hus- 
band, united in left-handed marriage to a 
second, having a gay reputation, and whose 
advances he regrets having heretofore neglected. 
He finds her apathetic, and this apathy is charm- 
ing by contrast. Madame de Stael knows noth- 
ing about it, but suspects. She writes to him 



Life at Coppet. 159 

** It is the crash of the universe and chaos in 
motion," says Benjamin. " All the volcanoes 
put together are less inflammable than this wo- 
man. ... I am tired of this man-woman whose 
iron hand has held me bound for the last ten 
years." He desired to marry Charlotte, but he 
dared not. Meanwhile he deceived her, and 
then abandoned her to return to Coppet, 
whither Madame de Stael recalled him. He 
arrived there fully determined to break with 
her. He told her so. She cried out that she 
*' would pursue him to the ends of the earth, 
and that if he escaped her, she would kill her- 
self." '* Rather than lose him I would marry 
him." He remained, not knowing which of 
her threats he dreaded more, — marriage or sui- 
cide. In the evening they went before the 
audience and played together. The piece was 
" Andromaque." Benjamin was Pyrrhus. 
The part pleased him. *' He is well pleased 
to play this part," writes his cousin Mademoi- 
selle de Constant, and adds, " Never was ' Her- 
mione ' played with so much truth and fervor." 
When the curtain fell and the footlights were 
extinguished, the quarrels began again in the 
green-room. 

They could neither tolerate each other nor 
separate, could neither marry nor dissolve. 
They made their friends by turns confidants in 



i6o Madame de Stdel. 

their disagreements and spectators of the stage 
whereon they continued their quarrels under 
assumed characters. It was a tragic romance 
in high Hfe ; seeing them pass thus from drama 
to real life, one asks in which role they were 
more sincere, and which character really leads 
the piece, — that which one believes to be living, 
or that which one believes to be acted. 

**We must submit," said Benjamin to him- 
self; " it is the fate of the weak." And again, 
" She is very useful to me in my tragedy." 
He refers to a play of " Wallenstein " which he 
is imitating after Schiller, and in which he 
makes Madame de Stael help him. *' Mon 
Dieu ! " he adds finally, " only make one or 
the other depart! " Napoleon heard his 
prayer, and the police brought about the 
climax. The Emperor refused to authorize 
Madame de Stael's return to Paris. "Your 
mother," he said later to the young Auguste 
de Stael, who went to offer him a petition as 
he was passing through Chambery, — " your 
mother would not be six months in Paris be- 
fore I should be obliged to put her in Bicetre 
or the Temple. She would do all sorts of rash 
things, she would see all the world, she would 
make a jest of everything; she would not 
think all this at all important, but I take every- 
thing seriously." For lack of anything better 



Life at Coppet. i6i 

Madame de Stael returned to Germany toward 
the close of 1807. She visited Munich and 
Vienna, of which she had previously known 
nothing. She revisited Weimar, which she 
found quite changed. The great geniuses had 
learned to admire Napoleon, and had discov- 
ered in him the man of destiny. 

She came back in July, 1808. At Secheron, 
near Geneva, she found Benjamin Constant 
awaiting her; he announced to her that he 
had been secretly married, and presented his 
wife to her. Madame de Stael was so beside 
herself with despair that she prevailed upon 
Charlotte and Benjamin to conceal their mar- 
riage. Charlotte in consternation yielded. 
Madame de Stael showed her plainly that she 
thought her very insipid to submit to the humil- 
iation. Benjamin was ashamed of it ; he thought 
he should have grown calmer by uniting him- 
self to this apathetic being; but he concluded 
that wrath had its charms. Moreover his mar- 
riage gave his return to Madame de Stael a 
flavor of infidelity. He allowed himself to be 
carried off to Coppet, where he stayed ; and 
Charlotte waited with the best grace she could 
command, for the return of her husband and 
the publication of their marriage. But this 
craze of Madame de Stael was to some degree 
only a matter of her imagination. Benjamin's 
11 



1 62 Madame de Stdel, 

treason had not killed her. She found that 
she had really no desire to die. She found 
that she could live without Benjamin, and she 
only kept him out of pride, and to hold for 
herself the honors of war. 

For a moment she thought of going to 
America, where she had certain interests. 
For this purpose she wrote a touching letter 
to Talleyrand in February, 1809. She appealed 
to his aid : '' You wrote me fourteen years 
ago, ' If I stay here another year, I shall die 
here.' I may say as much of my sojourn 
abroad. I shall succumb under it. But the 
time for pity is past; necessity takes the place 
of it, . . . Half of my life is gone. . . . Are 
you happy? With your superior mind do you 
not go to the bottom of everything, even sor- 
row?" Talleyrand considered that the bot- 
tom of everything was an immense void, and 
he did not like to look into it. He professed 
a particular aversion to explanations; if he 
sent her any reply, no one knows of it. Madame 
de Stael found some distraction in publishing 
the memoirs of the Prince de Ligne, which 
she had brought home from Vienna. But this 
" whipped cream " could not long sustain her 
imagination. Her friends, who thought she 
exaggerated her complaints of exile, advised 
her, if she desired to find favor again, to make 



Life at Coppet, 163 

use of the only advantage of her trials, — silence. 
" Do not write," they said ; " what is the good 
of writing? After a few years you will be for- 
gotten, and you will be as happy as though 
you had published nothing at all ! " 

This consolation was as intolerable as mis- 
fortune itself. Moreover, Madame de Stael's 
genius had matured singularly. The time was 
coming when the vocation to well-doing would 
replace that of being happy. The experience 
she had undergone on her return from Ger- 
many had led her even farther than she could 
have foreseen. She was at last freed from the 
yoke ; she reconquered herself little by little. 
But as she had formerly found that her worst 
slavery was to herself, it was now outside 
of herself that she instinctively sought her 
enfranchisement. 

Since the death of Necker, she had inclined 
toward the Christian religion. She now sought 
it by hard and stony, but direct paths. For- 
merly, when she had tried the wisdom of the 
ancients, she loved to repeat this phrase of 
Euripides : '' It is useless to fret over things, 
for that will not better them." It was sub- 
mission to fate; she was about to resign 
herself to the inscrutable designs of a just 
Providence. " We must take care that the 
decline of this life be the youth of the next," 



164 Madame de Stdel, 

she said. '' To give up self-interest without 
ceasing to be interested in others, puts a some- 
thing divine into the soul." She turned to 
Heaven for the satisfaction of that thirst for 
justice with which she was possessed, and 
poured out upon humanity that power of lov- 
ing which had kept her life in a vain ferment. 
She cast away, like a dry clod which is crushed 
to powder by a firm hand-grasp, the abstract 
and sterile philosophy by which she had been 
so long led far afield. She once professed to 
believe that nothing unintelHgible existed. In 
her imperative need of peace and hope, and in 
the impossibility of finding these within herself, 
she came to feel that the extremes of the uni- 
verse eluded the grasp of intelligence; that 
there are aspirations of the soul which even 
imagination cannot satisfy; that there is in 
man's spirit a reaching out toward the infinite 
which the spirit can neither suspend nor Hmit. 
She stifled the obstinate demands of judg- 
ment which would reduce everything to its 
own measurements. She heard nothing but 
the cry of her own heart. She said to herself 
that not only man's heart, but his whole soul 
** has reasons which reason itself knows nothing 
of." She listened to her Christian friends such 
as Mathieu de Montmorency, Gerando, and even 
the mystics, though to these latter she did not 



Life at CoppeL 165 

yield herself; she read Fenelon, she devoured 
the " Imitation." She gave up trying to solve 
life's enigma. '' I love the Lord's Prayer bet- 
ter," she said a little later, when some one 
spoke to her of metaphysics. She concluded 
that there was no philosophy but the Christian 
religion. If she had been logically led, she 
would have gone as far as Pascal ; but Pascal 
would have carried her too far, to heights too 
barren and too icy, to mountain tops and 
abysses which had always terrified her soul. 
Her theory of exaltation gave place to the 
theory of morality, said a friend. Madame de 
Stael saw the mystery of existence, as a rela- 
tionship between trial and fault. '' I have 
never committed a wrong," she was wont to 
say, "which did not become the source of 
a misfortune." "Whatever effort one may 
make," she wrote, " one must return to the 
recognition of the fact that religion is the true 
basis of morals; it is the real and sensible 
object within ourselves, which can alone de- 
tach our gaze from exterior things. . . . The 
science of morals no more teaches how to be 
an honest man, in all the magnificence of the 
word, than geometry teaches to draw, or 
poetry to invent happily. . . . Mathematics 
leads one to take account only of what is 
proven ; while primitive truths such as can be 



1 66 Madame de StdeL 

grasped by feeling and spirit are not suscepti- 
ble of demonstration." This is a faith that 
works, but questions not. Madame de Stael, 
like Necker once before, avoided *' the study 
of miracles and mysteries." She made her 
own religion, only too glad to find in it her 
peace and consolation, — "a pietistic latitudi- 
narianism," said the Due Victor de Broglie. 

This kind of conversion brought about great 
changes in her literary compositions and style 
of writing. Her works had been heretofore 
but her life's accessories; they were to be- 
come the principal object of it. She had 
sought in them a diversion in her exile; but 
it was still the world which she was pursuing 
even by this detoicr. Hereafter she felt herself 
more and more a stranger to the world, and 
she gave to her writings whatever in herself 
was least subject to worldly frivolity. She no 
longer sought to embellish her own person- 
ality in romances, in order to be the more 
beloved ; henceforth she made a great effort 
to transmit to her books the best of her soul, 
in order to be more helpful to humanity. Her 
inspiration no longer proceeds solely from en- 
thusiasm, she becomes generous and magnani- 
mous. In thus rising above the selfish interests 
of life, the parties and intrigues of the world, 
Madame de Stael begins to work for posterity. 



The Book on Germany, 167 

This epoch is marked by the production of 
the book on " Germany." Madame de Stael's 
new feelings stand out in the last chapters on 
" The Religion of Enthusiasm." This gives 
the moral dignity and the elevated tone to the 
work. Madame de Stael not merely proposes 
to accomplish the plan laid out in the book on 
" Literature," namely, to open to France new 
sources of poetry, — this she does in the first 
part of the work, — but she looks still higher; 
she endeavors to apply to a great nation the 
doctrine of progress, of which she is a stanch 
defender. She wishes to establish for others 
the justice and reason of those rights of ma7t 
which the pure reason of the French proclaims 
as universal, but which the Emperor's statecraft 
would swallow up, as the Empire in France 
had absorbed the Republic; she seeks to de- 
fend the nations, — their independence, their 
originality; to show the peace of the future 
as derived from reciprocal rights of peoples ; 
to declare that nations are not the arbitrary 
work of men nor the fatal result of circum- 
stances, that *' the submission of one people 
to another is contrary to nature;" to de- 
velop these great principles in relation to 
Germany; to remind "this poor and noble 
Germany " of her intellectual wealth even 
amid the ravages of war; to prove that Eu- 



1 68 Madame de StdeL 

rope cannot obtain repose except by the lib- 
eration of this land ; she endeavors, finally, to 
awaken the Germans to a self-consciousness, 
by crying aloud to them, '* You are a nation, 
and you weep ! " 

How could she have dreamed that a book 
written in this spirit could not only be printed 
in France, but reopen the gates of Paris to the 
author? How could she have beHeved that 
Napoleon would relax his severity on reading 
a work which was the condemnation of his 
reign, and the whole tenor of which aimed to 
instil a rebellious spirit in this Germany which 
had become the pivot of his machinery? 
There is but one explanation. Madame de 
Stael longed more ardently than ever to re- 
turn to Paris; and as she had become a 
changed woman, she imagined that the uni- 
verse also was going to change. She con- 
fessed this ingenuously: "Bonaparte needed 
at this epoch but one honest sentiment to be 
the greatest sovereign in the world." 

She ventured again within the circle of 
forty leagues which had been drawn around 
Paris against her approach. She established 
herself at Chaumont, in March, 1810, and 
superintended the printing of her book. Her 
usual attendants followed her, and left nothing 
undone to add to her glory. She announced 



The Censor and the Police. 169 

her intention of going to America, and begged 
an audience of the Emperor. *' Eight years 
of sorrow change all characters, and destiny 
teaches resignation to those who suffer." She 
allowed herself the only flattery which she 
could with dignity address to Napoleon : 
" Your Majesty's disfavor throws upon those 
who are its objects such disgrace throughout 
Europe, that I can no longer take a step with- 
out feeling its effects." She sent an advance 
copy of '' L'Allemagne " with the letter. Na- 
poleon would not believe in Madame de 
Stael's conversion. ** She is perpetual mo- 
tion," he said to Metternich, who presented 
the petition for her ; '* she stirs up the salons ; 
it is only in France that such a woman is for- 
midable, and I do not want her here." Mean- 
while the censors examined the book. Their 
opinion was that the author showed a lack of 
patriotism in provoking the Germans to inde- 
pendence, and of good taste in so praising 
their literature. Their censure, for the rest, 
fell upon merely a few passages, of which they 
demanded the suppression; and with this re- 
serve they authorized the publication. The 
Emperor prohibited it; the police destroyed 
the edition, broke the plates, and hunted the 
manuscript. Savary warned the author in a 
letter which shows that if Napoleon had put 



lyo Madame de StdeL 

Madame de Stael at the orders of the gendar- 
merie he directed the style of his gendarmes 
after the manner of his court. A letter dated 
October 4 advised Madame de Stael to return 
to Coppet and to stay there. 

This time it was real and unmitigated exile. 
She could neither write anything nor receive 
anybody. She saw her editor ruined, and 
Coppet forbidden to him. She felt herself 
" plague-stricken," and entered upon a course 
of deception, heretofore unknown to her, — 
" disaffections disguised as chest affections." 
She then commenced secretly to collect her 
souvenirs, and wrote the first part of the book 
which was afterward entitled '' Ten Years of 
Exile." She attempted a long poem, imitated 
after Byron, which should have Richard Coeur 
de Lion for hero, and the Orient for the scene 
of action. She sketched a treatise on " Suicide," 
which was a refutation of her book on " The 
Passions." " Human existence, well under- 
stood, is nothing but an abdication of the 
personality for the purpose of absorption in the 
universal order." She condemns the charla- 
tanism of the double suicide of Kleist and his 
mistress, which was then making a great stir 
in Germany. She denounces, with too great 
severity for the poet's works, the posthumous 
vanity of an "author without genius, who 



M. de Rocca, 171 

would produce by a real catastrophe effects 
which he could not attain in poetry." 

Thus she calmed herself by retiring within 
herself, like the sea after a storm, when the 
waves, rolling more and more slowly, become 
quieter and recede toward the horizon, where 
amid their rise and fall the sun sinks to rest. 
She thought herself forsaken forever; she felt 
herself drawing near to that dread hour ** when 
the twilight no longer suggests the dawn," 
and fades " pale and colorless as a livid 
spectre, the herald of the night." " The door 
of my heart is shut," she said. She was mis- 
taken; and the happiness which had eluded 
her when she followed it in ardent pursuit 
surprised her at the moment when she least 
expected it. 

In the last months of 18 10 there returned 
to Geneva a young officer of about twenty- 
three years of age belonging to the native 
aristocracy, Albert de Rocca. He had seen 
service in Spain, and had received a wound 
which obliged him to return home. He was 
slender, graceful, elegant, of gentle and charm- 
ing manners ; frank, tender, ingenuous ; of a 
passionate heart, and an emotional, even vehe- 
ment nature; of an original turn of mind, 
prone to leap to conclusions. Intrepid in war, 
he was merciful to the vanquished. He has 



172 Madame de StaeL 

related his campaigns soberly and without too 
much embellishment. One might think one 
were reading Stendhal humanized, or Meri- 
m6e grown tender. He was a hero of a new 
race; something of which Madame de Stael 
had not dreamed, with a charm possessed by 
no politic Valmont, or worldly Werther, or dip- 
lomatic Rene whom she had ever met. She 
found that he was wounded. She felt what 
she had often imagined in her books : *' Ah ! 
how beautiful is a proud and manly glance, 
when it is at the same time modest and 
pure ! . . . Pity seized me at the same time 
as love." Nevertheless she resisted her feel- 
ings; she was almost twice the age of Roc- 
ca; but Rocca had fallen under the spell, 
and the spell was contagious. *' I will love 
her so dearly that she will end by marrying 
me," he said. Delphine and Corinne that 
day had their revenge. Here was the man 
who dared to brave prejudice, and here was 
the woman submissive to him. The tempta- 
tion was too strong for Madame de Stael to 
resist; but the marriage, celebrated in the 
early part of 181 1, was kept secret. Madame 
de Stael retained her name ; for she dreaded 
the opinion of her friends. She feared ridicule, 
and in fact she knew that the world, after hav- 
ing ascribed so many weaknesses to her, would 



M. de Rocca. 173 

find it much easier to pardon her an accred- 
ited young lover than a young husband. 

Rocca brought back to her what she had 
thought forever lost, — youth's illusion; and 
she knew at last the happiness of being com- 
pletely beloved. Coppet suddenly became alive 
for her. There was a whirl of ''fetes and 
amusements." She wrote gay comedies for 
her theatre in place of the former sanguinary 
tragedies. Two of these were entitled " Cap- 
itaine Kernadec " and " Le Mannequin." Her 
friends were confounded. " She bewilders me 
more every day," said Sismondi. She began 
to play a new part; she no longer yearned for 
Paris ; she forgot her book, and took no 
thought for another; she lived in the present. 
Forget Paris! — these words are the measure 
of her revolution. 

Benjamin reappeared now and then. Madame 
de Stael's vivacity revived his own, and they 
once more dazzled their friends by their well- 
matched conversation. One day, during an 
excursion into Savoy, they went to drive, ac- 
companied by Madame de Boigne and Adrien 
de Montmorency, and their discourse fell 
upon the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespi- 
nasse. Madame de Stael and Benjamin be- 
gan to talk, and they talked so well that no- 
body noticed a dreadful storm which came 



174 Madame de Stdel. 

upon them, or roads flooded with water, or 
the long halt of the carriage under the porte- 
cochere of an inn. The storm passed over. 
Benjamin and Madame de Stael continued to 
talk, and were still talking when on their return 
home the excursionists learned from their at- 
tendants of the experience they had under- 
gone. But Benjamin could not long be the 
dupe of this change in affairs at Coppet. He 
was seized with jealousy, and his old ardor 
revived. He found himself supplanted, and it 
was his turn to rage. He twice challenged 
Rocca. He finally resigned himself to a re- 
treat, as much humiliated now at his depart- 
ure as he had once been at having to remain. 
Coppet would have been henceforth the* 
promised land, if the police had not made 
their stay there unendurable and almost 
perilous. The Emperor understood how to 
make it a wilderness. Schlegel was expelled ; 
Mathieu de Montmorency and Madame Re- 
camier, who had persisted in going there, re- 
ceived letters of exile. Madame de Stael was 
in despair at the thought of seeing them no 
more, and especially of being the cause of 
their disgrace. Then she began to tremble 
for Rocca. He belonged to the army; a sum- 
mons, at any hour, might tear him away from 
her. Lastly, she trembled for her children 



The Flight. 175 

and for herself. Elzear de Sabran wrote to 
her: *' If you remain, he will treat you like a 
Marie Stuart, — nineteen years of misery and 
a catastrophe at the end of them." Without 
being treated like a queen of the old regime^ 
she might be treated, like the Pope after the 
Concordat, to honorable captivity. She was 
assailed by fears ; she could no longer work. 
She could sleep only by the aid of opium. 
She constantly thought of death. She de- 
cided to take flight; but her condition de- 
tained her. She was secretly confined, left 
the babe to the devoted care of a friend in the 
Bernese Jura, and prepared her departure with 
the greatest mystery. 

• Her children had some interests and prop- 
erty in Sweden, and she would find there, now 
wearing the kingly title, one of her old friends 
of the Republican period. She had always 
had a liking for Bernadotte ; she hoped she 
could count upon him and find a refuge at 
his court. She departed the 22d of May, 
18 1 2, with her children, followed later by 
Rocca, and went by way of Vienna toward 
St. Petersburg. She sought in Russia " the 
last refuge of the oppressed," drawn toward 
this country by the same illusion which at the 
same time led the Emperor on to follow the 
last obstacle to his domination of the whole 



176 Madame de StdeL 

continent She cast a sad backward glance 
upon Coppet, and at the moment of putting 
'* the irreparable " between herself and the 
graves dear to her there, she cursed the Cor- 
sican who had banished her from her country. 
*' The air of this beautiful land is not natal 
air to him," she wrote ; '* can he understand 
the pain of my exile? " He was to know this 
pain only too well ; and he bore it to the very 
death. But who would believe it, this spring 
of 1 8 12, when Napoleon had drafted every 
nation into his service, subjugated all the 
princes of Europe, and seemed to control even 
destiny itself? 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Work on Exile. — The Flight through 
Europe. — Last Years. 

1812-1817. 

THE Emperor treated her as a pretender. 
Madame de Stael was allowed to exag- 
gerate the character she played throughout Eu- 
rope. She would not have been a woman if she 
had not found, even in her persecution, an indi- 
rect homage which flattered her pride, This feel- 
ing is betrayed by the grandiose and exalted 
air which, in her book on the " Years of Exile," 
she gives to the account of her quarrels with 
Napoleon. Suspense and heart-burning appear 
there also in features too sharp and cutting 
to make it necessary to warn the reader of it 
beforehand. It is not a historical writing; the 
author judges nothing. Neither is it a pam- 
phlet ; the author does not write for the sake of 
publishing her book and stirring up the public 
mind. It is the sad wailing and the bitter 
imprecation of a victim. No doubt there are 
in these memoirs too many epigrams of the 
salon along with too many diatribes of the 
tribune. These are the side issues of the nar- 



178 Madame de St del. 

rative ; they have grown stale. The narrative 
remains. It is copious; and in that part of 
the work which directly concerns Madame de 
Stael, she appears more philosophical than in 
her reflections. In a word, the philippics are 
matters of circumstance ; the narrative is histor- 
ical. It is enamelled with phrases a la Tacitus, 
which were to Madame de Stael's mind the 
sublimity of style. She tries as it were to soar 
with her disgrace; she flies like a wounded 
and complaining bird on baffled wing; but 
when she throws herself forward and the wind 
buoys her up, she uses the full play of her 
wings and regains the power of flight. 

She execrates Bonaparte ; she defames his 
glory and debases his genius; she never 
attacks his person. One cannot find either 
feminine perfidies or venomous insinuations in 
her vehement recriminations. She proscribes 
the Corsican from French history as an in- 
truder and a stranger : " The daughter of M. 
Necker was more French than he." She 
paints him as " inebriated by the bad wine 
of Machiavelism, and as resembling in many 
ways the Italian tyrants of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries ; " but in this malformed 
'figure she still makes him of gigantic propor- 
tions, formidable in tyranny, eclipsing the 
subtle Borgias by all the height that separates 



The Work on Exile. 179 

a colossal statue of Charlemagne from a little 
carved Italian image. 

In 1800 it had seemed to Madame de Stael 
that a hazard of war, a spent ball, a grain 
of battle-dust, might change the destiny of 
the world. She is still more passionately per- 
suaded of it in 1 8 12. The Empire is a hor- 
rible machine which is embroiling Europe: 
" Only stop the motor and all will fall into 
repose." She hopes from the coalition of the 
kings the re-establishment of " all the moral 
virtues " in Europe. These monarchical jus- 
tices will " snatch from the grip of the one 
man " the treasure stolen from humanity. She 
sadly deceives herself as to the princes and 
their enterprise; she suspects neither their 
avidity, their injustice, nor their secret wish, 
their only real motive, — namely, to preserve, 
under cover of a feigned affranchisement of 
Europe, the spoils which they have shared 
with Napoleon. They very soon put this in 
action, and Madame de Stael will judge them 
for what they are, — men of " but one idea, 
might, . . . mediocre men, time-servers, who 
have not the will to think beyond the present 
facts." But at the time she crossed Europe as 
a fugitive she would see only the nations rous- 
ing for their great fight, their proper fight, for 
independence. The French armies, in her 



i8o Madame de StdeL 

eyes, are only conquering and pretorian, mer- 
cenary in fact. Recruited to a large extent 
of foreigners, they no longer interest " true 
Frenchmen" or their cause. One might con- 
sider their defeat even as a good fortune for 
France. Napoleon in banishing Madame de 
Stael converted her healthy and upright soul 
into the soul of the exile. She had need of 
the lessons of 1814 and 181 5 before she could 
regain her strength and clear-sightedness. 

At Vienna she cast a bird's-eye glance over 
the actual political state of Europe, as shown 
by the staffs of the commanders and the coun- 
cillors' tables, and she found it quite different 
from her dream. She was confused by it. 
But she attributed all the ill to that '* deplor- 
able alliance " which had degraded the noble 
court of Austria. She saw the Austrians as 
they really were, and she imagined that she 
saw them perverted. She thought them mean 
in servitude and mawkish in tyranny. Met- 
ternich's satellites almost made her regret 
Savary's gendarmes. In Poland she learned 
to know the conquest of the ancient regime as 
practised by the pretended hberators whom 
she summons to the holy league of the people. 
It was conquest by the police and the tax- 
gatherer, the spoiler of property, the oppres- 
sor of men's souls. She was astonished but 



The Flight through Europe. i8i 

lately to find in captive Germany men who 
flattered themselves that they had gained 
from their French captors a breath of civiliza- 
tion and liberty. The Poles see no such 
mirage. She cannot accuse the copartners 
in the alliance of having mystified Poland as 
she reproached Napoleon for mystifying Eu- 
rope. These unfortunate Poles received her 
as a persecuted sister. They seemed born to 
comprehend her; they are filled with the same 
great dreams, agitated by the same contrary 
passions, incautious, over-bold, adoring a lib- 
erty which they can only conceive of as ab- 
solute, and impatient either of the excess or 
the privation of it. 

She arrived in Russia the 14th of July. That 
date on that frontier seemed to her a presage of 

freedom, — 

" Chimene qui I'eutdit?" 

" One could believe oneself in a republic when 
one reaches a country where the tyranny 
of Napoleon cannot make itself felt." She 
had simply reached a country at war with 
France. In her character of the illustrious 
enemy of Napoleon she obtained the iikase of 
the Czar commanding all Russians to do her 
the honors of the Empire. The officials 
obeyed the order literally; the nobility, more 
enhghtened, gladly paid court to her. The 



1 82 Madame de St del, 

love of liberty did not enter into their zeal 
more than it had entered into the attentions of 
the Prince of Orange to Madame de Longueville 
or those of Philip IV. to Madame de Che- 
vreuse. But though "liberalism " was ordered 
from above, hospitality was sincere, and the 
most generous hospitality in the world. Ma- 
dame de Stael, it must be allowed, was appre- 
ciative of this. 

For days together she rolled along in her 
carriage viewing the country. The vast plains 
suited her entirely intellectual character better 
than the mountains. She felt the grandeur of 
them and divined their poetry. " I felt a sort 
of spell such as one sometimes feels at night 
when one seems to be always walking but 
never advancing. This land seemed to me the 
image of the infinite, and as though it would 
take one an eternity to cross it." She found 
Moscow in arms. At Petersburg, the sea, the 
open sea ! The blockade was raised. " I saw 
floating over the Neva the English flag, sym- 
bol of liberty ! " She met Baron Stein, — the 
greatest, certainly, of Napoleon's proscripts, — 
and she read to him the chapter on " Enthusi- 
asm " from her book on "Germany." She met 
again Joseph de Maistre, always at the opposite 
extreme from herself even in hatred of the 
Empire. 



The Flight through Europe. 183 

At last she was admitted to an audience 
with Alexander, and immediately fell under 
his spell. One sentence tells the story: "The 
Emperor Alexander did me the honor to 
come and speak to me." He avowed to her 
the errors of his past; he disclosed to her his 
great designs for the future. He confessed 
that he had submitted to the seductions of 
Napoleon ; but he reset the scene and turned 
it into a symbolic drama. He described being 
taken up into a high mountain ; but the king- 
doms of the world and the glory of them had 
dazzled him only for a moment; he has con- 
jured artifice and unmasked " the charlatanry 
of vice." Napoleon has "encountered con- 
science," and his calculations are confounded. 
Erfurt was but a dream, the interviews were 
only visions, the treaties apocryphal, all ca- 
lumnious inventions ! Madame de Stael not 
only exonerates Alexander, but she glorifies 
him by anticipation. " There is genius in his 
virtue ! " This autocrat, who combines the 
mystic duplicity of the German with the facile 
exaltation of the Slav, shows himself to be in- 
finitely more Machiavelian than the Corsican. 
Oh, if Bonaparte had received her with this 
effusion of confidence, how great he would 
have become in her eyes, and how easily, for 
at least some months, she, too, would have 
found her road to Tilsit! 



184 Madame de StdeL 

She had some intercourse with Koutousof. 
That valiant and crafty soldier posed as the 
obedient and pious instrument of God's designs 
for his country. " He was an old man of 
gracious manners and vivacious physiognomy. 
I did not know whether I embraced a con- 
queror or a martyr, but I saw that he com- 
prehended the grandeur of the cause with 
which he was intrusted." She thought less of 
the government than of the men ; in the latter 
she saw the patriotism and national spirit 
which actually animated them; she made 
every effort to discern in the institutions of 
the country a spirit of liberty which was no- 
where to be found. From this fantastic point 
of view she even placed Peter the Great far 
above Richelieu, " who did nothing but govern 
tyrannically within the empire and astutely 
without." 

But she laid a wonderful hold on the char- 
acters around her: " They are all Russians at 
heart, and this gives them their force and 
originality." These Russians turn all their 
tastes to " luxury, power, and courage." Their 
genius is strange to her: one feels as though 
one stood at "the gateway of another land, 
near to the Orient, whence so many religious 
faiths have set out, and which still holds within 
its embrace inconceivable treasures of industry 
and reflection." They seem to bivouac even 



The Flight through Europe. 185 

in their palaces; they spend their lives as 
though on a race-course, in the sleigh, or the 
carriage, always at a gallop behind their horses, 
over an everlasting plain. Few ideas; only 
facts interest them. The police teach them 
silence. Society is only a march; a going and 
coming, with never any conversing. " In the 
midst of all this noise is there love? " the Italians 
would have asked. Corinne judges that there 
is more of domestic virtue and less of senti- 
mental love than foreigners have represented. 
" In these fanciful and vehement natures love 
is rather a feast or a delirium than a profound 
and thoughtful affection." Their passions are 
simple and sudden; they go directly to the 
point, without taking account of difficulties, 
less still of means : ** A Russian desire," said 
a clever man, ** would blow up a city." The 
peasants have an air of " elegance and gentle- 
ness." She finds the nation full of mystery, 
and this mystery of the nation big with future 
events. The Russian people possess reserves 
of national virtue *' enough to astonish the 
world." "What characterizes this people is 
a gigantic proportion in every direction. . . . 
Everything with them is colossal rather than 
well proportioned, audacious rather than well 
planned ; and if the end is not attained it is be- 
cause they overshoot it." These minds which 



1 86 Madame de StdeL 

combine the wealth of the Orient with the 
visions of the North must certainly bring forth 
poets and artists ; but Russian literature must 
be freed from the cold imitation under which 
it languishes, and Russians must seek their 
inspirations " in what is most intimate and real 
to their own souls." They will have a genius of 
their own " when they have found the means to 
express their own nature in language. ... It 
is always among the people that one must seek 
the sap of the national genius." 

Nowhere has Madame de Stael shown more 
perspicacity than in these pages. It is but a 
sketch ; but all the essential features are there, 
and this outline of Russia deserves to be placed 
beside her great picture of Germany. She 
left Petersburg in September, and made her 
way to Finland. She was much struck by the 
great forests and scattered rocks ; *' but there is 
little life about these great ossifications of the 
earth." She sailed from Riga. The voyage 
depressed her. '* I looked upon the land at 
the horizon as long as I could perceive it; the 
infinite strikes our view with as much fear as 
it strikes our souls with pleasure." 

The court and society at Stockholm gave 
her a great reception. She allowed herself 
during her stay here the repose of which she 
was so much in need. Rocca — "Monsieur 



The Flight through Europe. 187 

rAmant," as Byron afterward called him — had 
followed her, not without hindrance. His role 
was embarrassing, but he sustained it gallantly 
and with grace and dignity. Madame de Stael 
could not bring herself to publish their mar- 
riage, and yet she had it repeated or confirmed 
in Sweden. " She was always afraid of not 
being sufficiently married," says Rocca. It 
was in Stockholm that she wrote the second 
part of her '* Ten Years of Exile," — the exo- 
dus of 1 8 12. She began there also the great 
Apology of Necker, so long projected. 

Bernadotte appeared to her grown larger, 
but not changed. This majestic Gascon, he- 
roic and crafty, impressed her without stun- 
ning her; he was only 2l parvenu. She had 
thought of him for a high place in the Republic 
before the advent of Bonaparte; she placed 
him now on the throne of France to succeed 
Napoleon. Her good wishes had followed 
him in the wars in which he engaged, in his 
management of the alliance of the kings, of the 
opinion of the French, and especially of his 
army, which constituted all his prestige and 
the entire guaranty of his present elevation. 
Madame de Stael was not more amazed to 
behold him among the co-allies than to see 
another of her old friends, Moreau. She con- 
sidered this contest of peoples merely as a 



1 88 Madame de Sidel 

grand return of things, the national revokition 
reacting against France. " Enthusiasm had 
crossed over from the left bank of the Rhine 
to the right." This state of mind she carried 
with her to England when she went there in 
June, 1813. 

There she printed and published in October 
the book on " Germany." The homage of the 
upper classes, the interest, the admiration, the 
sympathy of which she was the object, flattered 
her inexpressibly. If Germany was to her the 
land of enthusiasm, England was still the 
promised land of liberty. In this perspective 
she once more considered matters and men in 
England. Everything was there ennobled in 
her eyes, as everything in France was degraded 
under the lurid light of Napoleon. She deep- 
ened her knowledge of the institutions ; she 
extended her study of the English political 
customs, and collected material from which she 
afterward drew the best portraits contained in 
the sixth part of the " Considerations," — Lord 
Grey, Lord Lansdowne, Sir James Mackintosh, 
Lord Harrowby, — ** the best circle of clever 
men that England, and consequently the world, 
can offer." She knew Lords Erskine, Holland, 
Canning, and Byron ; the latter did not cease 
to harp upon her weaknesses. Walter Scott 
was preparing " Waverley ; " she affected him 



The Flight through Etirope. 189 

with the same horror as she had Schiller, and 
he avoided falling into her way. 

Always more expansive than inquiring, she 
harangued the English upon their own affairs, 
and confounded them by her flow of advice. 
They received her advice with as much in- 
difference as politeness. She was not deceived 
by this phlegm, but the lesson she took led her 
to unexpected conclusions. " What ascen- 
dancy could a woman have, amiable as she 
might be, amid popular elections, parliamentary 
eloquence, and the inflexibility of the law?" 
This was to avow that neither in the monarchy 
of 1 79 1, nor in the republic of the year III, 
nor in any other representative government, — 
that is to say, in any of her chosen forms of 
government, — was there any more place for 
her salon, her influence, or indeed for her politi- 
cal ideal. She was about to make proof of this, 
even in France. 

Once more she thought of Bernadotte ; then, 
as she familiarized herself more with European 
politics, she returned to the Bourbons. The 
force of circumstances brought her to this ; 
she resigned herself, but was not converted. 
Her hopes of the coalition fell with each vic- 
tory of the alHes, When she saw strangers 
overleap that ** solemn " barrier of the Rhine 
which she had thought placed there by Nature 



I go Madame de StdeL 

against all Europe, and which she gratuitously- 
believed consecrated by unanimous consent of 
the monarchies, she shook from head to foot, 
as though the ground over which she walked 
swayed beneath her. The veil was parted. 
She now knew that there was no real France 
save where the French flag waved. She turned 
upon Bonaparte again in her rage. She hurled 
against him the famous apostrophe uttered in 
the year VIII, — " What have they done with 
that land of France which I left to them so 
glorious?" unaware that at that very hour 
Napoleon was justifying by the same argument 
his lasting refusal to the everlasting equivoca- 
tion offered by the fallacious peace of the 
allies, — " What ! would you have me leave 
France smaller than I received it? " This was 
not the only encounter between herself and 
her tyrant to which the country's disaster un- 
wittingly led. " Is it the time to speak of 
abuses when two hundred thousand Cossacks 
assail our frontiers?" said Napoleon to the 
Corps Legislatif Benjamin — always in quest 
of fortune and power, but gliding over realities 
— was working for Bernadotte. He had written 
a panegyric on the coalition : '' On the Spirit 
of Conquest and of Usurpation." He sent it 
to Madame de Stael with a passionate letter. 
She replied to the letter : ** You have con- 



The Flight through Europe. 191 

sumed my life. For ten years there has not 
been a day that I have not suffered on your 
account. How I have loved you ! " — which 
was to say that she loved him no more. She 
replied to the pamphlet : ** It is not the time to 
calumniate France when the Russians are at 
Langres. May God exile me from France 
forever rather than let me owe my return to 
strangers." 

But she found them installed in France when 
she returned there in May. *' Germans, Rus- 
sians, Cossacks, Baskirs," — she found them 
conquerors, rapacious, brutal, spoilers, arrogant, 
and vindictive. She could not help admiring 
Wellington, but Alexander had descended 
from his pedestal and laid aside his Petersburg 
aureole. He reigned at Paris as a conqueror, 
and he exercised there with much pomp a 
very diplomatic clemency over France lying 
at his feet. Everything about this so much 
longed for revolution astonished and upset 
Madame de Stael. She did not recos^nize 
Europe, nor did she recognize herself any 
more. The spirit of '89 always glowing within 
her ; her hatred of Napoleon satisfied even to 
satiety ; her illusions dashed by the crusade of 
the allies ; her hopes of the liberty of the peo- 
ple deceived : "All was confusion within me . . . 
I thought that the foreigners had shaken off the 



192 Madame de StdeL 

yoke. I admired them without reserve at that 
epoch; but to see Paris occupied by them, 
the Tuileries, the Louvre, guarded by troops 
from the far confines of Asia, to whom our 
language, our history, our great men, were all 
less familiar than the last Khan of Tartary, was 
an intolerable grief to me," She felt shattered, 
stunned by the wear of agitations, the shocks 
of tribulation, and the burdens of life. Her 
friends found her *' pale and thin, . . . com- 
pletely changed." 

She spent the summer of 1814 at Coppet, 
and returned to Paris in the autumn. She was 
much sought after; her salon was filled with 
friends ; but her very success gave rise to new 
troubles. In the society of the Restoration 
she was confronted with the same difficulties 
as in the Republican society of the year III. 
The reaction made her indignant and rebel- 
lious, and she did not seek to hide her feelings. 
The members of the exile party manifested the 
same spectacle of intolerance as had formerly 
the regicidal aristocracy. The royalists who 
had supported Bonaparte now atoned for their 
idolatrous servility of yesterday by a furious 
zeal of orthodoxy. Bonaparte had slept in 
the bed of Louis XIV. ; Louis XVIII. sleeps in 
the bed of Bonaparte. The ministers of the 
king oppose to liberty, which has but an in- 



Last Years, 193 

secure footing In the laws, all the artifices of 
Imperial despotism. They lead on the sub- 
missive revolutionaries and retain them In their 
functions, but to the end that they may the 
more surely annul the laws of the Revolution. 
The charter Is but an Edict of Nantes, the 
abrogation of which the ultra-royalists perfi- 
diously urge. The Church reclaims the mo- 
nopoly of the education of the people, and 
endeavors to recover all her prerogatives in the 
domain of thought. The army is filled with 
intruders, officers by favoritism, who. If they 
have seen service, have seen It only against 
the French. At this spectacle the patriot 
again awakes in Madame de Stael, and in the 
name of that glory which yesterday she con- 
demned, she cried : " Is it thus that they should 
treat twenty-five millions of Frenchmen who 
lately conquered all Europe?" At last the 
salon becomes for sheer bitterness only a mob 
whose murmur has no echo : " The courtiers 
were of opinion that good taste forbade men- 
tion of politics or any other serious subject." 

The return from Elba did not surprise her. 
At first glance she felt this event disastrous: 
** Liberty is done with if Bonaparte triumphs, 
and national independence is over if he is de- 
feated." In haste she quitted Paris, where Ben- 
jamin with his sceptical near-sightedness, never 
13 



194 Madame de Stdel. 

seeing the value of crises, was the dupe of what 
she calls " the idiocy " of tacte additionnel. 
She rudely opened his eyes. But at the same 
time she preached peace to the foreigners. 
She addressed to an English friend a letter 
which is a second edition, revised and made 
appropriate to the circumstances, of her " Re- 
flections " addressed to Pitt in 1795. After 
Waterloo, she wrote to the Due de Richelieu : 
''The problem consists in the integrity of 
France, the departure of the foreigners, and the 
EngHsh Constitution openly and sincerely es- 
tablished." Hereafter this is what she waits for, 
and she is compelled to wait long indeed. 

Rocca's health, which was much impaired, 
obliged them to spend the winter in Italy. 
She found there the caricature of Machiavel- 
ism, the artful and cowardly tyranny of bigoted 
monarchs. She saw the people doomed by 
these feeble despots to degradation and the 
dungeon. She is indignant to hear Napoleon 
and the French vilified by the best society 
around her : " It is rating France and Europe 
too low to declare that for fifteen years they 
have obeyed a poltroon." She took the part 
of the Italian nation against the Holy Alliance, 
as she had taken the part of the German na- 
tion against the Napoleonic conquest. All 
that was resurrected from the ruins of the old 



Last Years. 195 

regime galls her in Italy as in France. But 
she is able to turn away her eyes from it; she 
has her own happiness at her side. 

" If I have a daughter," she said in *' Del- 
phine," " ah ! how I will watch over her choice ! 
how I will repeat to her again and again that 
for a woman all the years of life depend upon 
one day ! " Her daughter was all that could be 
desired. She chose for her a husband of the 
elite, a grand seigneur and a great citizen, no- 
bler still in heart than in birth. The marriage 
of Mademoiselle de Stael with the Due Victor 
de Broglie was celebrated at Pisa in the 
month of February, 18 16. In this quest of 
happiness which was her destiny, Madame de 
Stael had accomplished her masterpiece, and 
had realized for the one dearest to her in all 
the world the dream of her life. 

At Coppet, to which she returned in June, 
she received Stein, a wanderer and imbittered 
like herself, having lost confidence in kings 
who were traitors to their word, ungrateful to 
their servants, spoilers of their people, eager 
to enjoy in selfishness the fruits of a struggle 
" which they had neither begun nor aided." 
How far it was from the book on ** Germany," 
from the treatise on " Enthusiasm," from the 
Petersburg soirees, and the aurora borealis of 
1812! In the autumn Madame de Stael again 



196 Madame de StdeL 

established herself in Paris, in the rue Royal. In 
spite of political disturbances, there followed 
some brilliant months. But she felt her life 
ebbing from her, and the world she had known 
and loved was fading away. A new generation 
was rising around her, — the generation whose 
history Balzac has written, and which she saw, 
with horror, invading society. ** They are in- 
telligent, bold, determined, clever hunting-dogs, 
eager birds of prey; but that inner conscience 
which makes one incapable of deception, in- 
gratitude, servility to power, and indifference 
to misfortune, — all those virtues which are 
of blood as well as of will and reason, were 
treated as chimeras or as romantic fancies 
by the young people of this school." These 
gilded dandies of the race of speculators are 
the direct descendants of the roues of the old 
regime trained in the service of Bonaparte; 
they are the rivals of Talleyrand, brought up 
to politics by Fouche. In her youth, Madame 
de Stael had measured the ravages caused 
by libertinage of the heart. She lived long 
enough to foresee the disorders that may be 
brought about by libertinage of statecraft. 

It was in this state of mind that she wrote, 
with inspired pen and with an oftentimes bitter 
inspiration, the last chapters of her " Consid- 
erations." She employed the whole winter in 



Last Years. 197 

revising the first two parts of this work pre- 
viously composed. The labor was beyond her 
strength. She became very feeble. Worn out 
by insomnia, enervated by the use of opium, 
terrified by the thought of death, she fled 
from that death, as it were " fighting against 
the invading ills with an heroic impetuosity; 
invited everywhere, going everywhere, keeping 
open house, receiving in the morning, at din- 
ner, and in the evening." She was diverted 
then by conversation, but at night her restless- 
ness would not let her keep her bed, and she 
walked to and fro for hours together trying to 
conquer her mind by fatigue, to benumb it, to 
soothe it. In the month of February, 1817, 
the malady so much dreaded seized upon her 
while at a ball at the house of the Due De- 
cazes. She fell paralyzed and could not rise 
again. This was, for her ardent nature and 
her fanciful imagination, the most horrible of 
afflictions. She had often pictured to herself 
its tortures : " A soul still alive united to a 
ruined body, inseparable enemies." 

She bore her trial with resignation in her in- 
most soul, and before her friends with a sort of 
melancholy gayety. She made the most, in 
view of her death, of all that remained of her 
life and the last flower of her illusions. She 
had been removed to a house in the rue des 



198 Madame de StdeL 

Mathurins, where there was a garden. Her 
friends must go to dine with her there, as 
though she were still doing the honors of her 
own house. " She was no longer in the draw- 
ing-room," says Chateaubriand, who finally did 
her some justice and ended by going over to 
her side. ** On entering her room I approached 
the bed. The invalid, half sitting up, was sup- 
ported by pillows, her cheeks burning with 
fever; her fine glance was fixed upon me, and 
she said, * Bon jour, my dear Francis^ (in 
English). * I am suffering, but that does not 
prevent my loving you.' " 

Rocca, very ill himself, surrounded her with 
tenderness. He was ever the constant object 
of her solicitude. She was afraid of dying 
without having time to bid him farewell. She 
begged to be awakened when the opium made 
her sleep, lest death should surprise her in the 
midst of it. And yet she watched with terror 
the signs of the end, " surpassing in horror 
even death itself." " Would it not be better," 
she said, *' to let man's end come like the end 
of the day, and as much as possible make the 
sleep of death seem like the sleep of life?" 
This wish was fulfilled. She fell asleep in the 
evening of the 13th of July and never woke 
again. 

She was interred at Coppet. ** The proces- 



Last Years, 199 

sion," says Bonstetten, " passed between two 
rows of children and old people, — all the men 
were then engaged in harvesting, — until within 
the walls of the cemetery, near to the grove of 
beeches and poplars where stands the tomb in 
which her father and mother rest side by side. 
The day was magnificent, and the joyous song 
of the birds contrasted with the solemnity of 
the company assembled; the black-clad men 
seemed shadows come from another world be- 
yond the thick woods. The grave lay under 
the shadow of the trees." 

Her children paid her a last homage by 
publishing her marriage with Rocca, and re- 
ceiving as a brother the child born of it. This 
act of filial piety supplied the society chroni- 
cles with matter for several days, and reawoke 
the attention of the public. Madame de Stael 
had wearied the salons with her genius, her 
eloquence, and the noise of her misfortunes. 
They were in haste to shake off her unwel- 
come //rj-/^^^ and to forget her. But this very 
forgetfulness of a world which had been the 
object of her idolatry, furnished to her post- 
humous mockers an opportunity for a last 
thrust. ''The day of her praises is past; 
she received them in her lifetime, there is no 
more to be said," wrote Joubert. "Except 
for the newspapers, the end of a life which has 



200 Madame de St del. 

been so tumultuous would not have made the 
least stir." '* She inspired in me," wrote a 
woman who in politics had followed quite an 
opposite course, " that sort of pity which I 
feel when I hear an account of the fervors of 
the ancient prophetesses, or of our own con- 
vidsionnaires . . , . She gave me the idea of a 
moral hermaphroditism." 

The disappearance of the earthly form of 
Madame de Stael was not regretted by her 
children. They would gladly have drawn a 
veil over it, because there was not a single 
opinion passed by the world which did not 
clash with their own worship of her. Their 
mother, they thought, no longer belonged to 
them. The world had during her life only too 
truly stolen from them her person and her 
heart. But in bringing her back to the do- 
mestic temple, they desired to raise an endur- 
ing monument over her tomb. Therefore 
they published in i8i8 and 1821 the manu- 
scripts she had left to them; namely, " Con- 
siderations upon the French Revolution " and 
" Ten Years of Exile." The " Considerations " 
is, together with the book on " Germany," 
the most important of Madame de Stael's 
works. In publishing these manuscripts her 
children not only offered her, in the words of 
a contemporary, *' brilliant and pubhc obse- 



Last Years. 201 

quies," but they consecrated her to posterity. 
The Duchesse de Broglie once asked Sainte- 
Beuve, " Why do you occupy yourself with 
my mother? Does not what has ah'eady been 
written about her seem to you sufficient? " 
Why? Because she is the author of these two 
books ; because she has opened, on the great- 
est affairs of the age, views which looked far 
into the age, and because she has entered 
once and for all into the patrimony of the 
glories of France. 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Book on Germany. 

THIS book is the most finished of all Ma- 
dame de Stael's writings ; the composi- 
tion is broad, the thought is just, the style 
well sustained. The whole work is governed 
by a plan, which is to make Germany known 
to the French ; to explain it to them, and, by 
contrast, to explain France to the Germans 
and make them admire her more; to reinvi- 
gorate French literature ; to enlarge the hori- 
zon, and to open to poetry new avenues to new 
sources. Madame de Stael brings to this work 
an intellect of extraordinary comprehension, 
a human sympathy, a love of truth, an enthu- 
siasm for the beautiful which no one has ever 
excelled. 

The work is divided into four parts : I. Ger- 
many and the Customs of the Germans. II. 
The Literature and Arts. III. The Philosophy 
and Ethics. IV. Religion and Enthusiasm. 

Only the first two parts are a direct study 
of Germany ; the third is a series of disserta- 
tions on questions dear to the author ; the 



The Book on Germany. 203 

last, a digression upon her favorite theme. 
The proportions of the book are therefore 
those of Madame de Stael's own mind. The 
tone is that of the time in which she Hved. 
But in this sense the last two parts are valu- 
able as testimony. The first two have lost 
nothing of their value. We now do differ- 
ently, know more; but we comprehend no 
better, we feel no more keenly. The basis of 
the book still holds ; and several chapters 
which made their epoch remain decisive. 

The author is from the start impressed 
by contrasts. There is no classical prose in 
Germany; less importance is attributed to 
style there than in France; each one creates 
his own language. The poetry has more char- 
acter than the prose, and it is at the same time 
easier to understand ; probably because rhythm 
and measure regulate the thought and oblige 
it to be precise. Poetry in France is all spirit, 
eloquence, reason, or jest; poetry in Germany 
is all sentiment, — it is " the poetry of the soul." 
It touches and penetrates ; it makes one see, 
and it makes one dream. 

Madame de Stael belonged too much to the 
eighteenth century to appreciate the revolu- 
tion which Chateaubriand had accomplished 
in French literature. But when she arrived in 
Germany, where she learned the language and 



204 Madame de StdeL 

the literature at the same time, she felt spon- 
taneously what had as yet escaped her notice 
in France, — the lively charm, the harmonious 
force, the mysterious suggestiveness of the 
words : " One does not say in French what 
one wishes to say, and one never sees floating 
about one's words those clouds of a thousand 
shapes which envelop the poetry of the North- 
ern languages and awaken a host of recollec- 
tions." She began to understand in Germany 
the essence of popular poetry. Herder was 
the herald of this poetry; Goethe opened the 
way to it. Comparing this with the gilt and 
tinsel Germany heretofore set forth in the 
odes, and the operatic Hermanns, pompous 
and ridiculous as the troubadours of the style 
of the Empire, Madame de Stael writes : *' The 
simplest national song of a free people causes 
a more real emotion. It is only in their hearts 
that the Germans can find the source of truly- 
patriotic songs." She wrote these lines in 
1809. Uhland and Koerner were about to 
answer the call. 

She admires Klopstock beyond measure; 
but Klopstock's is the *' poetry of the saints," — 
virtue in verse, Necker turned poet; her ad- 
miration is of the nature of piety. She judges 
Wieland at a distance and justly, — '* a Ger- 
man poet and a French philosopher who 



The Book on Germany. 205 

alternately provoke each other ; . . . national 
originality were far better." She finds this 
originality in Burger, the poet of popular 
superstitions and reviver of legends. Schiller 
represents that "soul poetry" which is the 
special province of the poetry of Germany. 
Goethe dominates German literature and all 
contemporary literatures ; with his nature, 
spirit, serenity, reason, and breadth of thought, 
he has all the great qualities and possesses the 
secret of eternal forms. *' His imagination is 
struck by outward objects, as were those of the 
artists among the ancients ; yet his reason has in- 
deed attained the full maturity of our own times. 
Nothing shakes his strength of mind ; and the 
very drawbacks in his character — his moodi- 
ness, embarrassment, constraint — pass as clouds 
around the base of the mountain whose summit 
is crowned by his genius." Like the ancients 
whom his powerful originality brings back to 
life, he retains all the simplicity and '' artless- 
ness of power." He is directly in touch with 
humanity and Nature. We find in him " those 
[primitive] miracles of sympathy between 
man and the elements." He " understands Na- 
ture, not only as a poet, but as a brother ; and 
one might say that familiar voices spoke to him 
in air, water, flowers, trees, and indeed in all the 
primitive beauties of creation. It is this in- 



2o6 Madame de St del. 

timate alliance of our being with the marvels 
of the universe which gives to poetry its true 
greatness." Add this poetry of Nature to the 
poetry of the soul, remember that Madame de 
Stael knew nothing of Andre Chenier, and 
that she stopped short at Parny and Lebrun-Pin- 
dare, and you will see that her discoveries went 
deep, and there is no exaggeration in allowing 
the breath of genius in her revelations. 

There are limitations, however. She can 
understand everything that can be explained 
in the conversation of the salon; she sees all 
that can be seen in passing in her carriage, — 
where again she talks more than she observes ; 
she divines the national sentiment ; she fore- 
sees the poetry that shall be derived from it, 
because her imagination is sympathetic, gener- 
ous, and free. But she is not of this people, 
she does not descend to the lowly of heart. 
She has neither the taste nor the time for that. 
She has no conception of the poetry of elemen- 
tary passions which she has not herself experi- 
enced. The idiomatic metaphors of the lan- 
guage do not call up to her imagination objects 
which have never been of interest to her. For 
this reason Vos's " Louise " seems to her vulgar 
and foolish. I doubt whether, had she read 
" Truth and Poetry," she would have experi- 
enced any pleasure in Sesenheim's incom- 



The Book on Germany. 207 

parable idyl. The masterpiece of Goethe and 
of German literature, one of the masterpieces 
of modern art, " Hermann and Dorothea," not 
only makes no distinct place for itself in her 
view, amid contemporary works, but it does not 
impress her at all. She has hard work to 
bring herself — on the faith of Humboldt, " one 
of the most cultured men of the whole coun- 
try " — to admire the " natural dignity " of the 
hero and heroine of this rustic poem, the 
incidents and personages of which seem to her 
of too little importance. " It lacks," she adds, 
'* a certain literary aristocracy of tone," with- 
out which there can be no great masterpieces. 

On the other hand, she enters the domain 
of the theatre with a bold step. All phases of 
this seem to have been made accessible and 
familiar to her. It is to the theatre particu- 
larly that her famous definition of *' romanti- 
cism " is applicable. If she did not actually 
invent that word, she certainly popularized it. 
The word *' romantic " was used of characters 
and landscapes which recalled the Romans, 
and was employed as a synonym of '' Roman." 
Wieland, by analogy, used it in German to in- 
dicate the country in which the ancient Roman 
literature still flourished. The first French 
translator who came across the word in this ac- 
ceptation of it commented upon it as having the 



2o8 Madame de Side I. 

meaning of "the land of the fairies;" another 
translated it, " the country of the Romans ; " 
a third puts simply ''the romantic regions;" 
and the word, which was at first convenient 
because indeterminate, entered into common 
literary usage through a misconception. Ma- 
dame de Stael defines it thus : " We take 
the word * classic ' sometimes as a syno- 
nym for perfection. I use it here in another 
sense in considering classic poetry as being 
like that of the ancients, and romantic poetry 
like that which holds in some manner to chi- 
valric traditions. This division relates equally 
to two eras of the world, — that which pre- 
ceded and that which followed the establish- 
ment of Christianity." 

One cannot better defend the classic French 
theatre, particularly Racine, against German 
prejudices than she does; one could not show 
better reasons than those she gives, why this 
theatre, the most unique in the world in ab- 
stract theories, the most exclusively French, 
and French in a society at once very close 
and refined, should remain forever impenetra- 
ble to foreigners. She is not less apt in bring- 
ing out German dramas, and translating them 
for the use of the French public. Her judg- 
ment of Lessing is sound; she analyzes 
Schiller eloquently; she admires "Don Car- 



The Book on Germany. 209 

los," and still more "Maria Stuart" and 
** Wallenstein." " Wilhelm Tell " pleases her 
less, for the same reason as " Hermann and 
Dorothea," in spite of her interest in the 
*' respectable conjuration of Riitli." Elsewhere 
she pays homage to this high poetic concep- 
tion which, as in " Athalie," makes the nation 
figure as the hero of the drama. She shows 
that Goethe has no genius for the theatre. He 
puts admirable poems such as " Iphigenia," 
or great historic studies such as "Goetz" or 
" Egmont," into dialogues ; he lavishes upon 
them '' the brush-strokes of Michael Angelo : " 
but these are not dramas, and his works fall 
flat on the stage. 

We must stop awhile over her study of 
" Faust." Benjamin Constant could understand 
nothing whatever of this masterpiece. He 
sees in it a *' derision of the human species," 
an obscure and heavy counterpart of *'Can- 
dide." Madame de Stael sees in it what 
Goethe put into it, and adds to it nothing of her 
own devices. Her interpretation proceeds 
fresh and real from her conversations with the 
poet. The trash of commentators has since 
disfigured and almost blurred the work. Every 
Frenchman who does not know German, who 
has not lived in Germany, and who would enjoy 
Faust, would do well, before reading a trans- 
14 



2 TO Madame de St del, 

lation, to study Madame de Stael's analysis. 
Without it, if he is very patient and very sub- 
tle, he may perhaps imagine that he under- 
stands the explanations of scholars, but he 
certainly will not understand the poem. ** Faust " 
is delineated in a few lines, and one can see 
very well why Benjamin found in it nothing to 
his taste : " Faust combines in his character 
all the weaknesses of humanity, — the desire to 
know and the fatigue of toil, the need of suc- 
cess and the satiety of pleasure. . . . He has 
more ambition than strength ; and this inward 
craving makes him revolt against nature." 
He is the lasting type of those '' candidates of 
vice who have a good will to do evil, but lack 
the talent to accomplish it." At this point he 
differs from Moliere's terrible Juan. This Don 
Juan is carried off by the Devil, but he defies 
him and does not yield himself to him. Faust 
is devoted to sorcery and witchcraft ; the Devil 
whom he evokes makes him afraid and mocks 
at him. Mephistopheles is marvellously well un- 
derstood by Madame de Stael. It is because 
she does not seek to know him through the 
legend, of which he retains only the costume. 
She takes him in real life, out of which he comes, 
in the age of which he is the deformed child, 
impious and evil-doing, but of which he has 
the real spirit. It is a devil who is the con- 



The Book on Germany, 2 1 1 

temporary of Frederick, of Voltaire and La- 
clos ; licentious and ironical to the last degree ; 
always " he who denies," who limits all things, 
lowers all things, analyzes all things, annihilates 
the soul, drives away the conscience, ruins the 
reason ; a devil who has read Wolf, Pufendorf, 
Rousseau, Diderot, and Holbach, and kills 
each with the other; who vilifies humanity, 
drowns the vanity of man in human mire, 
jeers at corruption, and amuses himself with 
confounding the human mind even in the 
depths of scepticism, — for he is jocosely per- 
verse, and a bantering Nihilist; he thinks that 
of all the follies in the world denial is that 
which furnishes the most laughter. There is 
nothing about him that one can lay hold on ; 
he has no vulnerable spots, lame though he is, 
— lame as the vice he fans and as the justice he 
mocks at. If one listens to him one is lost ; 
he takes hold of you through pride of life, and 
leads you to contempt of yourself. '' It is 
the delirium of the mind and the satiety of 
reason, . . . together with poetry of bad prin- 
ciples, an intoxication of evil, an aberration of 
thought, which make one shudder, laugh, and 
weep all at once." 

The part devoted to the novels Is less origi- 
nal and not so well developed as that which 
treats of the theatre. Yet her life at Coppet 



212 Madame de StdeL 

had fitted Madame de Stael to appreciate 
" Wilhelm Meister." This she found charm- 
ing; she had Hved hke this book, and she 
found it hving. She is enthusiastic for Jean 
Paul; she thinks she understands him, and 
compares him with Montaigne, The chapters 
devoted to criticism as employed by Lessing, 
Herder, and Schlegel, " the power of know- 
ing and admiring," are to be counted as 
among the most fruitful in the book, I will 
delay but little over the philosophy. Madame 
de Stael speaks only from hearsay, and she 
imagines more than she analyzes. She finds 
in Kant only a reviver of the idea of duty: 
" He would re-establish primitive truths and 
spontaneous activity in the soul, conscience in 
morals, the ideal in the arts." The rest — that 
is to say, the critique of pure reason — escapes 
Madame de Stael in its direct object, and 
especially in its consequences. Her Kant, 
humanitarian, liberal, eclectic, and kindly, the 
disciple of the " Vicaire Savoyard " and who 
submitted his critique to Necker's censure, is a 
conventional Kant. For Madame de Stael's 
purposes, the ruling ethics of Germany must 
be sweet and *' sensible ; " and Madame de Stael 
puts it there by grace or by force. In this 
order of ideas, that which ought to have inter- 
ested her most — namely, the influence of 



The Book on Ger^nany. 213 

Fichte on the national mind — never seems to 
have struck her. As to metaphysics itself, it is 
bottomless and she shuns it. Her natural 
good sense glides over the logomachy of the 
great abstracters of quintessences. She had 
not understood a bit of it, and she does not 
convey an idea of it. In the chapters on the 
religion of enthusiasm, Germany is but a 
chapter-head. 

There now remain only the social customs 
and the governments. The impressions gath- 
ered by the author in the course of her 
travels are here summed up and reasoned out. 
They are almost always just. Madame de 
Stael remarks the difference between the north 
and the south of Germany. In the south, that 
" mild and peaceable monarchy," favorable to 
the development of an independent literature; 
the sort of liberty to write and think which 
existed in France under the old regime which 
tolerated all abuses in suppressing all natural 
rights. This liberty is better defined and ex- 
ercised in Prussia. There all seems sterner 
and ruder. She appreciates Frederick in his 
work of government, and she analyzes this 
work well in reciting the causes of its deca- 
dence; but the elements of regeneration are 
apparent, and this is essential in this order of 
studies. There is never any lack of libellists 



214 Madame de StdeL 

and diplomats who succumb to appearances 
and announce the corruption of the State. 
The thinker discerns the Hfe that is latent, and 
the sap that will rise again. It takes genius 
to predict a resurrection, Madame de Stael 
foretold the resurrection of the State of Prus- 
sia. She hoped for that of the whole German 
nation, and marked out the conditions for it. 

The principal obstacles arise out of certain 
characteristics : the Germans are too apt to 
confound " obstinacy with energy, rudeness 
with firmness." They have certain social vir- 
tues, but they are the virtues of weakness. 
They are, she says, visionary, good, faith- 
ful, loyal, sincere, full of kindness, little in- 
clined to war, submissive to power even to a 
servile degree, slow even to inertia ; they put 
poetry into everything, and all their poetry 
they put to music. Their character is *' patchy," 
like their country. Only a national spirit, by 
providing a united nation for them, can de- 
velop in them the quality which they lack. 
This would make them revolt against the for- 
eign arm which now holds them subject, and 
against the foreign influence which now warps 
the course of nature. They imitate too much, 
indeed, and too openly. They are too cosmo- 
politan; they are too eager to know and to 
understand all things, even at the risk of losing 



The Book on Germany. 215 

themselves in this unlimited scrutiny of others: 
'' He who does not take in the affairs of the 
universe has nothing to do there." They have 
not enough " national prejudices." " The patri- 
otism of nations should be egotistical." The 
Germans have too much knowledge and too 
little experience ; they are not realistic enough 
in their affairs. Energy does not show itself 
except in free countries and powerful States. 
In this respect the Germans have everything 
to learn from England concerning public lib- 
erty, and from France everything concerning 
national and state activities. They will never 
learn these by themselves. They will ripen 
for national independence, but they are still too 
immature for political liberty. They need a 
master to arouse the nation, and this master 
must be a German prince. 

The author, following her natural sympa- 
thies rather than her experience of history, 
takes no notice of the contradiction which at 
this point undermines her structure. The Ger- 
many which she idealizes in 18 10 corresponds, 
in her fancy, to France in 1789. In Germany 
she sees a nation to be resuscitated ; in France 
she had seen liberties to be re-established. In 
France the revolution, social and civil, was 
realized under the consulate, but degenerated 
under Bonaparte's empire and dethroned the 



2i6 Madame de StdeL 

France of 1789. The national revolution can 
only be realized in Germany by the " Prussian 
Spur," and it will in turn uncrown the Ger- 
many of 1 8 10. The charm of that Germany 
is her very misfortune and oppression. The 
ideal is the consolation of the afflicted whose 
kingdom is not of this world. In becoming 
national, united, strong, in being inspired by 
''egotistic patriotism" and "national preju- 
dices " which Madame de Stael desires for 
them because these fall under the conditions 
necessary to the independence and power of 
great peoples, the Germans will lose their 
apparent simplicity and all the poetical attri- 
butes of weakness. Madame de Stael never 
perceived this, for it would have been neces- 
sary for her to glance ahead through half a 
century and take in the significance of three 
revolutions. But amid the fright and bewilder- 
ment of the Napoleonic conquests she dis- 
cerned the steady and firm advance of national 
ideas in Germany, and that was much indeed. 

Nobody has disputed her, but many have 
blamed her. Recent criticism has shown more 
severity and injustice on this point than even 
the Napoleonic censure. Madame de Stael's 
hope was rash, they say ; patriotism should 
have forbidden her to harbor such a hope ; to 
publish it was almost equivalent to treason. 



The Book on Germany, 217 

Let us understand her ; this hope was the very 
hope of the French Revolution. Madame de 
Stael simply remained faithful to it ; and it is 
not her fault at all that by a deplorable reverse 
in our history, the national breath of the Revo- 
lution turned about then and has since turned 
against France. There was then, and there 
has always been, but one means of avoiding 
this reverse ; and that is to judge as Madame de 
Stael did, and to take the significance of events 
as the fundamental counsel of politics. The 
year 1870 reversed the proportions of the book 
on *' Germany," and altered what were Ma- 
dame de Stael's points of view. Criticism has 
overlooked this optical change, and has taken 
no account of it at all. " This whole country 
resembles the dwelling-place of a people long 
absent from it." Such was the Germany Ma- 
dame de Stael knew and described. In con- 
trast to this Germany, filled with political 
distress and moral greatnesses, she holds up 
as a lesson to Germans forgetful of their dig- 
nity and as a warning to Frenchmen forgetful 
of their ideal and their liberties, a France 
which in the picture she draws of it strongly 
resembles the Germany which appeared to us 
after 1870, — a France which has abjured the 
great dreams of humanity, — a France all armed, 
all avaricious, and all conquering, knowing no 



2i8 Madame de St del, 

right but that of the strongest, no justice but 
that of success, no law but that of numbers. 
** The French are only powerful in the mass, 
and even their men of genius take their guid- 
ance from accepted opinions when they wish 
to make a plunge beyond." France of steel, 
compact, homogeneous, obedient, disciplined, 
a formidable machine of State, — " The pres- 
ent and the real belong to her." It is to the 
French enlisted by Napoleon that Madame de 
Stael addresses the apostrophe which forms 
the conclusion of her book, and which by a 
strange turn of fortunes applies now to the 
Germany of Bismarck, the Germany of iron 
and of fire: ''If enthusiasm were quenched 
on your soil, ... an active intelligence, a sapi- 
ent impetuosity, would still make you masters 
of the world ; but you would leave there only 
traces of torrents of sand, terrible as floods, 
arid as the desert." 

It may be said with truth that the book on 
" Germany " was not the work of a politic 
woman. The Princess des Ursins would never 
have conceived the idea, in her disgrace, of 
composing such a book on the Spaniards. If 
a lady of the Court of Russia had written on 
Poland in this style, the great Catherine would 
have at once ordered her to be transported to 
Siberia ; but when this book is qualified as anti- 



The Book 071 Germany. 219 

French, it is a sin against conscience. To 
choose the hour of the deepest abasement of a 
people crushed by conquest, — the hour when 
her princes begged for her body at the feet of 
the conqueror, when her great men celebrated 
the genius of the victor, and demonstrated the 
historical necessity for his victory, — to choose 
this hour to recall this people to its rights 
and titles of humanity; to animate it to in- 
dependence, to warn it that it must owe to 
a revolt of its own conscience its regenera- 
tion and health; to warn the victor that he 
was going too far, that he was in the wrong, 
that the wind that blew him forward would 
one day turn against him, that the current 
would change, and that if he did not retrace 
his steps the reaction of his own victory would 
carry him backward : to conceive these ideas, 
and, for the sake of disseminating them, to 
wander as an exile over all the high-roads of 
Europe, — this is the deed of a generous soul, 
and by its very imprudence one of the most 
entirely French in its nature ever performed 
by any French writer. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

" Considerations upon the French Revolution." 

ALTHOUGH '' U Allemagne " is the most 
perfect of Madame de Stael's works, the 
" Considerations " is the most profound and 
virile. It is unfinished. I doubt if the author 
could have ever corrected its faults of com- 
position. This book transformed itself under 
her pen. To give it unity, the first and last 
parts — the parts dearest to Madame de Stael's 
heart — would have to be sacrificed. Her first 
intention was to write an apology for Necker. 
She wished to put the portrait of her father in 
the foreground of a sort of gallery of France 
during the Revolution. The Revolution little 
by little invaded the gallery, and pushed the 
portrait into a corner. With the Restoration 
in 1 8 14 and 18 15, Madame de Stael believed 
that the cycle which she proposed to portray 
had come to an end. Then she saw the French 
Revolution contested in its principles, its le- 
gitimacy, and its essential results. Events led 
her to defend this revolution, and to bring up 



* ' Consider a tionsT 2 2 [ 

the great recollections of it which she had 
preserved. The second idea submerged the 
first. For the justification of her own and 
Necker's ideas, she added to her studies of 
France " a picture of England." This picture 
she enlarged, and it became the sixth part 
of the work. Finally, all her convictions hav- 
ing been dashed in 18 16, she again went into 
battle, and set forth her views on the gov- 
ernment of the restored monarchy. This part, 
made up of discussion solely, forms the fifth 
part of the book. The '* Considerations " is 
therefore composed of several works, one upon 
another, — a filial apology, a defence of the 
Revolution, a medley of personal souvenirs, a 
political study of the English Constitution and 
society, and fragments of articles and dis- 
courses on the affairs of France during the 
year 18 16. 

The Revolution is the common ground of 
these studies; it sustains and throws all the 
parts into relief The writer presents its de- 
velopment, as she conceived and observed it, 
from its point of departure, in the Constituent 
Assembly of 1789, to its conclusion in the 
Constitutional Charter of 18 14. In this history 
of a quarter of a century she follows all the 
crises of liberty, and shows liberty to be 
the essential object and accomplishment of the 



22 2 Madame de Stdel. 

French Revolution. It is the history of the 
spirit of 1789; it is more than the history, 
it is the resurrection of that spirit. Even if 
the " Considerations " did not contain histori- 
cal parts of the first importance, it would still 
be classed among the most precious docu- 
ments. The Revolution is treated as a whole, 
and from the point of view most just for that 
epoch. It is not from the scaffold of Louis 
XVI. and from within the prisons that it ought 
to be considered, in order to understand the 
reasons for it, and to explain even its very 
excesses ; it is from the throne of Louis 
XVIII. and from Paris the home of the re- 
turned exiles. Therein lies the originality of 
Madame de Stael's book ; there lies its strength. 
The leading idea is contained in this fine 
maxim which the author applies to all the 
parts with a lofty impartiality : '' All minor- 
ities invoke justice, and justice is liberty. One 
can only judge a party by the doctrine which 
it professes when it is strongest." 

The Revolution, she says, not only made 
France free, but prosperous. It was no doubt 
suUied by crime ; but there never was a time 
when it did not bring forth in the French the 
best virtues of humanity as well. The honor 
and strength of the Republicans lay in their love 
of country. The Vendeans " exhibited the 



" Considerations!' 223 

character that makes free men." Let no one 
therefore exaggerate the subject of cruelty 
and faction. In England during the Civil 
War, in France during the Religious Wars, 
the same fanaticism engendered the sarfie 
crimes. There remained to the credit of the 
French Revolution the noble enthusiasm 
which it inspired, the great deeds and the 
great souls which it aroused, the principles 
which it laid before the future, and the liberty 
which it founded upon indestructible bases. 

The solidity of these bases is derived from 
the fact that they are sunk almost indefinitely 
in the past of France, It is not depreciating 
the Revolution, but confirming it for posterity 
to fix it so in the history of France. Here is 
the place for the writer to give her views of 
history ( Montesquieu is her teacher ) : His- 
tory deduces the necessary relations resulting 
from the nature of things ; it points out and 
explains the eternal conditions of progress 
for States and peoples. This is the ground 
of the method and the art of thinking in his- 
tory. But the historian, if he would move 
men, should speak to their imagination. He 
must " penetrate the past, interrogate the hu- 
man heart through all ages, seize upon a fact 
through a word, and upon the character and 
customs of a nation through a fact." Never- 



224 Madame de StaeL 

theless, facts and words are but signs destined 
to represent the profound causes which pro- 
duce them. These causes govern even the 
caprices of passion and the accidents of 
chance which the scepticism of Voltaire was 
pleased to declare the sole motives of hu*man- 
ity. Reduced to this, history would lose its 
meaning and moral; it would be no longer 
either a science or an instruction. The his- 
tory of the Revolution, in particular, is sealed 
to any such frivolous interpretations. This 
great crisis is inexplicable by petty facts ; the 
action of casual events and of individuals dis- 
appears from it, as though submerged in the 
flood. Secondary causes in it can only be ex- 
plained by general ones. It is the one great 
aim, the national aim here, which supersedes 
all others and which alone explains everything 
else. 

This conception of history is just. The ap- 
plication of it to the past of French history is 
defective. Madame de Stael lacks not facts, 
but a guide. Why did she not live until 1823? 
Guizot's Essays, which have illuminated all the 
avenues of French history, would have set her 
upon the right road, and she would not have 
been compelled to grope about in the dark. 

She developed this fine proposition inspired 
by Montesquieu, and defined by herself during 



^'Considerations'' 225 

the meditations of her tour In Russia: *' It Is 
important to repeat to every partisan of the 
rights which are rooted In the past, that It is 
Hberty which is ancient, and it is despotism 
which Is modern." Local and provincial lib- 
erties have formed the nation ; royalty de- 
formed it in taking selfish advantage of it; 
but It has not annihilated It Indeed, and the 
nation found itself whole and entire when it 
shook off" Its bonds. " From the old age of 
Louis XIV. to the French Revolution, mind 
and might lay with Individuals, and the gov- 
ernment was In Its decline." It had to be so, 
or the advent of those fiery, Independent, and 
heroic souls, a whole generation of patriots 
and heroes, after three quarters of a century 
of State decadence, would have no explanation. 
In the heat of her liberal demands, Madame 
de Stael denies to Richelieu any great political 
conception whatever: he destroyed *' the origi- 
nality of the French character, its loyalty, its 
candor, its Independence." She speaks of 
him as of Napoleon : " He was a foreigner In 
France." Bonaparte was a Corsican of Italian 
blood ; Richelieu was a priest brought up In 
the Italian schools. She refuses any admira- 
tion for Louis XIV. up to the time of his mis- 
fortunes. She will see nothing great in his 
reign. She discerns, on the contrary, with 
15 



226 Madame de StdeL 

wonderful clearness all its excesses, and shows 
their consequences. She had no need for 
recourse to comparison ( which is the whole 
philosophy of history ) of the article on '' Re- 
ligionnaires " in the ''Repertoire" of Guyot in 
1785 with the article on '' Emigration" in the 
"Repertoire" of Merlin in 1807, to discover in 
the edicts of Louis XIV. the spirit and the 
very letter of the laws of proscription of the 
Reign of Terror. 

This retrospective course, wherein the writer 
meets with many a snag and drifts from the 
path many a time in the fog, nevertheless 
holds to the main course and pursues one 
constant aim. It leads Madame de Stael to 
her end, which is a large view of history : The 
great results of the Revolution were accom- 
plished by means of what was purest and 
noblest in the French nation ; the crimes were 
due to the eternal perversity of mankind. The 
government of the old regime did nothing to 
control this perversity in the French people; 
if some germs of it still remain in them, it is 
not in re-establishing the old regime that this 
corruption will be annihilated. The institu- 
tions of the old regime were what " formed 
the nation ; and if it was in their nature to 
elevate but one class of men and to deprave the 
rest, assuredly they were worth nothing. . . . 



" Co7isiderationsr 227 

Doubtless, in taking the curb off of the peo- 
ple, one puts them into a position to commit 
all sorts of crimes ; but how comes it that this 
people is depraved enough for this? The 
government that we hear spoken of in terms 
of regret had time enough to form the nation 
which shows itself so culpable. The priests 
whose education, example, and riches, they 
say, are theirs to do good with, presided at the 
birth of the generation which is now let loose 
against them. . . . The fury of the revolt is in 
proportion to the vices of the institutions; 
and it is not to the government that one de- 
sires to have, but to the government that one 
has had for a long time, that one must look for 
the moral condition of a nation." 

These are the best lines in the book. I will 
not enter into the detail of impressions, recol- 
lections, and opinions. I have merely tried 
to give the essential points in the preceding 
chapters. Everything personal in the *' Con- 
siderations " was made mention of in the life 
of the author. I refer here only to the '^ Con- 
siderations " properly so called, — the syn- 
thetical reflections, formed at long range. I 
do not need to remark that the figure of 
Necker is disproportionate; yet it is somewhat 
edifying, like the Byzantine pictures, — flat- 
tened colossi of familiar saints. No one can 



228 Madame de Side I, 

pass a better judgment upon the Constituent 
Assembly, '' which united so many shining 
lights to so many dark errors, which accom- 
plished a lasting good and at the same time 
a great and immediate evil," which laid down 
fecund and tutelary principles, set up useless 
and even harmful institutions, but which, 
nevertheless, gave to the national genius an 
impulse of which one could truly say in i8i6: 
" If we are astonished to see that France has 
yet so many resources within herself in spite 
of her reverses, ... it is to the decrees of the 
Constituent Assembly that we must attribute 
the fact" 

The chapters on exile are full of historic 
sayings long since passed into aphorisms. The 
real sophistry of the Terrorists is thus un- 
masked : '^ It is just when the danger is passed 
that popular tyrannies are established." The 
honor of the country's benediction is rendered 
to whom it is due : " One more problem re- 
mains to be solved : it is how the government 
of 1793 and 1794 triumphed over so many 
enemies. . . . This prodigy can only be ex- 
plained by the devotion of the nation to its 
own cause." 

These views are far-reaching ; I have before 
this shown their limitations. I will not return, 
therefore, to the subject of democracy, which 



" Considerations,^'* 229 

Madame de Stael dreaded and avoided; nor 
to military glory, which she underrates ; nor to 
conquest, which she disapproves ; nor to armed 
propaganda, which she condemns ; nor lastly, 
to Bonaparte, whom she curses. She refuses 
to consider the origin, reason, and develop- 
ment of the events which seem to her devia- 
tions from the French Revolution as she un- 
derstood it. The things that crushed her life 
and shattered her hopes seem also to her to 
have crushed and shattered the history of 
France. Bonaparte, according to her, had 
ruined and blasted the new France, as his 
predecessors, Richelieu and Louis XIV., with- 
ered the old. With equal severity she con- 
cludes, concerning his reign: *' Of all the heri- 
tage of his terrible power, there remains to the 
human race only the knowledge of a few more 
secrets of the art of tyranny." 

One side of France — the heroic, the State as 
a whole — entirely escapes the notice of the 
daughter of Necker. But her passionate pe- 
riods are not altogether inspired by rancor. 
Madame de Stael is partial, but she is not 
blind. She denies what she refuses to see; 
but what she wishes to see, she sees clearly. 
The reverse side of the consular and imperial 
epoch, which Is what she shows to posterity, 
is shown equitably. Bonaparte has fallen by 



230 Madame de Side I. 

the time Madame de Stael writes. His legend 
will read contrary to Madame de Stael. The 
songs of Beranger, the odes of Victor Hugo, 
the history of Thiers will popularize and trans- 
figure immeasurably the glorious image of the 
Emperor, the emancipator of peoples, the 
legislator of the French, the Charlemagne of 
the Revolution, But for the sake of justice, 
right, and common-sense there are some ob- 
jections and some limitations to be put in the 
name of the liberty of the French, of the rights 
of humanity, and of the Revolution understood 
as a consecration of that liberty and those 
rights. By means of the vengeance and folly 
of the royalists, Madame de Stael in 18 16 saw 
ideas and words falsified for the second time 
in men's minds, and the disastrous misunder- 
standings of the year VHI repeated. *' God 
preserve us from that now and forever ! " she 
cried, as she thought of a possible return of 
the Caesar. " But we must be careful not to call 
Bonapartists those who sustain the principles 
of liberty in France ! " This is the peril that 
she would avert. And this warning to the 
future corrects whatever is defective in these 
chapters to the mind of a party that is now of 
the past. 

The chapters on the two Restorations are 
almost decisive. The historian is here present. 



''' Considerations r 231 

keen of sight and well under control in 
passing judgment on French affairs. The 
men of the times are well placed, and events 
are in their proper proportions. Both are 
traced to their sources, and begin over again, 
in a way. Madame de Stael did not discover 
the links that unite the victorious and Caesa- 
rian Republic to the wholly hberal Revolution 
of 1789; but between this Revolution of 1789 
and the Restoration of 18 14 the links form 
themselves in her very hands. She revives 
again, in her denunciation of the pernicious 
and absurd designs of the ultras, the energy 
and eloquence of the times of the Constituent 
Assembly. 

" Must we always govern in a style three 
hundred years behind the times, or will a new 
Joshua command the sun to stand still? . . . 
It would be curious to know to which genera- 
tion of our forefathers infallibility has been 
ascribed. . . . They desire an absolute king, 
an exclusive religion and intolerant priests, a 
court nobility founded upon genealogy, a 
commons enfranchised from time to time by 
means of letters patent of nobility, a peo- 
ple ignorant and without rights, an army that 
shall be a mere machine, ministers without 
responsibility, a press without liberty, no 
juries, no civil liberty, but police-spies and 



232 Madame de StdeL 

newspapers bribed to laud this work of 
darkness." 

And what are the means by which history 
is so distorted? Courts of high commission, 
state-prisons, crooked elections, electoral col- 
leges bought, Protestants and republicans 
delivered over to a frenzied and fanatical 
populace ; and lastly, the intrusion of the clergy 
everywhere in the State, and religion every- 
where the servant of politics. Madame de 
Stael has studied the writings of the new 
theologians; she has read the orders of the 
bishops, and cries out, '' Will their senses take 
leave of them? " The Christian in her protests 
as vehemently as the citizen. Christianity, she 
says, is synonymous with justice and liberty; 
by what right shall these sentiments, the no- 
blest on earth, be interdicted '' an alliance with 
heaven "? One can measure the extent of her 
indignation against such doctrines, and the 
horror which such retrograde movements in- 
spire in her, by the impetuosity of the feelings 
that carry her away. This woman, so aristo- 
cratic in tastes and mind, convinced moreover 
of the social necessity of religious beliefs, and 
a Christian in whatsoever concerns this neces- 
sity, declares without reserve that religion is 
exclusively an affair of the home. She had 
seen the clergy at work before 1789; they 



''' Considerations r 233 

were powerless. She considers them danger- 
ous in 1816. "Public education is a duty of 
the government to the people, and one upon 
which it cannot first levy the tax of this or that 
religious opinion. . . . Who will teach religion 
and morals to the children, it has been asked, 
if there are no priests in the schools? ... It 
has certainly never been the upper clergy who 
have fulfilled this duty; and as to the curates, 
they are more needed for ministrations to the 
sick and dying than for instruction, except as 
concerns the knowledge of religion. We must 
establish and increase the number of schools 
in which, as in England, poor children are 
taught to read, write, and reckon; we must 
have colleges for the teaching of ancient lan- 
guages, and universities for carrying on still 
further the study of those beautiful languages 
and the study of the advanced sciences." 

Nowhere better than in these chapters does 
one grasp the hindrances without number which 
stopped and finally overturned the work of the 
Restoration, paralyzed the good-will and the 
politics of Louis XVIII., wore out the great 
soul of Richelieu, ground down the noble 
genius of Serre, and ruined in advance the 
generous enterprise of Martignac. The pre- 
sentiment of the inauspicious aberrations that 
menaced France and, above all, the fear of dis- 



2 34 Madame de Stdel. 

couragement into which new trials might throw 
the liberals, and which again drove Madame 
de Stael to England, — this is the key to the 
sixth part of the *' Considerations." 

Madame de Stael's " L'Allemagne " is often 
compared to the " Germany" of Tacitus. The 
comparison would be more just as regards 
the sixth part alone. It is England which is 
Madame de Stael's true Utopia. "Admirable 
monument of the moral grandeur of man ! . . . 
No people in Europe can be put on a parallel 
with the English since 1688; there are one 
hundred and twenty years of social improve- 
ment between them and the continent." The 
author's incursions into the past of England 
present the same uncertainties as her incursions 
into the past of France. Her pictures and 
characters of contemporary England are much 
idealized. Corinne with all her visions, the 
always inconsolable betrothed of the illusory 
Nelvil, is the painter of them ! But what 
sound thought when the author comes to earth 
again, and what admirable lessons of history, 
what noble teachings of poHtical morals, in her 
address to the French people ! Let them take 
courage, she says to them, for themselves and 
their revolution; let them, above all things, 
never declare themselves incapable of liberty. 
This was said to the English at a similar time, 



" Considerations r 235 

when they were achieving their freedom. 
Consider the EngHsh of yesterday, and you 
will recognize the French of to-day. We 
must constantly bear in mind the fanaticism, 
the disorders, the atrocities of the revolutions 
in England. '* They deposed, killed, over- 
turned more kings, princes, and governments 
than all the rest of Europe together. ... In 
the early history of this people there is more 
violence, more inequality, and in some respects 
more of a spirit of servility than among the 
French." And yet they reached the land of 
promise. " It is a beautiful sight, — this consti- 
tution, vacillating a little as it sets out from the 
port, hke a vessel launched to sea, yet unfurl- 
ing its sails and giving full play to everything 
great and generous in the human soul." 

To this promised land all the peoples of the 
earth are called ; and all, sooner or later, will 
reach it. The author invites them thither ; and 
it is with a wish for the independence of all 
nations that this warm apology of free govern- 
ment concludes. There are some pages of 
great perspective in it, and these are the politi- 
cal testament of Madame de Stael. The future 
belongs to the nations, and the progress of 
civilization should sanction their independence. 
It 'is contrary to nature that one nation should 
be subject to another. The Revolution 



o 



6 Madame de StdeL 



throughout Europe will be accomplished by 
and for the nations. It will take a national 
form, and under this form it will prevail 
against all men. It is the imperative course of 
history. " Nothing durable can be accom- 
plished except by the universal impulsion. . . . 
Anything is better than to lose the name of 
nation." Madame de Stael foresaw the na- 
tional future of the Russians; she announced 
the supremacy of North America ; she hoped 
for the Germans and the Italians the chance 
to constitute themselves into federations. She 
foresaw that between these nations, aroused 
and gathered together, there would necessarily 
be conflict ; she apprehended even then the con- 
flict between the "Germans and the Esclavons," 
as she calls the Slavs ; but she relies upon this 
maxim inscribed in the book on '' Germany," 
and which supphes the temperament neces- 
sary to every enterprise of national ambition 
contrary to the rights of nations : '' When a 
nation admits within her borders as subjects 
strangers who are enemies, she does herself 
almost as much harm as when she receives 
them as masters; for then there is no longer 
in the body poHtic that unity which personifies 
the State and constitutes patriotism." 



CHAPTER IX. 

Her Influence. — Posterity in Politics, 
History, and Literature. 

IN her writings Madame de Stael was espe- 
cially anxious to be a guide and leader. 
She succeeded. Few writers have exercised, 
in so many different directions, so lasting an 
influence. This influence has been more effi- 
cacious and more recognized since the death 
of Madame de Stael than during her lifetime. 
The reason is that the intrigues of her salon 
compromised the sincerity of her expressions, 
and the intemperance of her language thwarted 
the effect of her writings. One may say of her 
whole life and of the fate accorded to her 
works what Chateaubriand said of her early 
years, her years of trial and of passion : " Ac- 
cording as her youth weighed less on her life, 
her thought emerged from its chrysalis and 
put on immortality." 

She has had the rare privilege of a double 
posterity, if I may so express it, each equally 
glorious. She has founded a dynasty ; and few 
houses, even among the most illustrious, offer 



238 Madame de StdeL 

such a succession of original talents. But her 
descendants are not, properly speaking, her 
disciples ; and If one would follow her direct 
Inspiration, It Is in another posterity, purely 
intellectual, that he must seek it. This inspi- 
ration appeared, clearly defined, In politics, 
history, and literature. 

The Restoration opened the political world 
to Madame de Stael. Her friends form a 
group whose right rests upon Mathieu de 
Montmorency, the left upon SIsmondi, and the 
centre on Camille Jordan. Benjamin hovers 
on the outskirts of the parties, hostile to all 
and Impatient for a place where he would 
never be able to remain. To this group of 
friends must be added the men who received 
their impulse at a greater distance, who never- 
theless feel it distinctly: the Due Victor de 
Broglie, who will retain to the end, with all his 
firmness of character, the generous glow of 
heart ; Serre, the man who never put the least 
soul into his politics, — his campaign of 1819, 
the heroic epoch for the Constitutional Mon- 
archy, was animated entirely by the spirit of 
Madame de Stael; she seemed resuscitated 
for it. Then comes the liberal progeny of the 
Restoration, the followers of " La Doctrine " 
and the *' Globe," — politicians, literary men, 
orators of the academy and the tribune, more 



Posterity in Politics. 239 

eloquent than active, and more excellent in 
opposition than they will be in government. 
They all proceed from Necker, they have all 
had Royer-Collard for preceptor, and Madame 
de Stael is their muse. The greatest among 
them — their representative in history, if not the 
head of their line — is he who at the same time 
best interprets the political spirit of Madame 
de Stael in this liberal opposition of the Res- 
toration, — Guizot. A man of the salon, a man 
of science, a speaker of incomparable brilliancy; 
kindliness itself with his friends, but at first 
haughty to others ; passionate beneath a Cal- 
vinist exterior, — he is Necker lifted above 
himself, the combination of a great minister of 
public instruction, a diplomat of large scope, 
an orator without a rival, and one of the first 
historians of the age. In him Madame de Stael 
goes on as far as the Revolution of 1830. 
Then the fallacy of a change of dynasty re- 
appears, and the preconceived analogy with 
the English Revolution of 1688, which has de- 
ceived as many Constitutionalists as the legend 
of Monk has deceived Royalists. The Cabinet 
of October, 1832, which united Guizot and the 
Due de Broghe, perpetuates the political suc- 
cession of Madame de Stael; but her reign 
stops there. 

A little later she would not have recognized 



240 Madame de Stdel. 

herself save among certain opponents, — by the 
side of Lamartine, for example. It is a turning- 
point in history. The spirit of 1789 is vanish- 
ing. The new whispers that are heard come 
from other quarters of the Revolution : it is 
the democracy that is invading; it is socialism 
that is rising; it is Caesarism which, like a 
baleful judgment, follows in the train. It is 
the era of De Tocqueville's " Democracy in 
America" (1839), of the trial of the Saint- 
Simoniens, of anarchist plots, of apologies of 
the Reign of Terror, of the '' Idees Napoleoni- 
ennes " of Louis Napoleon (1838), of the 
return of the ashes of the first Napoleon 
(1840), of the imperial odes of Victor Hugo 
(1835-1840), — '' La Colonne," " L'Arc de 
Triomphe," " Mil huit cent onze," '' A Laure, 
Duchesse d'A." 

" I guard the treasure of the glories of the Empire ; 
I have never suffered another to touch it." ^ 

The influence of Madame de Stael on the 
French historical school goes far beyond anal- 
ogous phases. One may prove it in every line 
of the learned Droz's history of Louis XVI.; 
but here, again, the disciple in the truest sense 
who takes up, enlarges, and finishes the work, 
is Guizot. It is impossible not to see in the 

1 "Je garde le tresor des gloires de I'Empire; 
Je n'ai jamais souffert qu'un osat y toucher." 



Posterity in History, 241 

"Essays on the History of France" (1823) the 
living impress of the last writings of Madame 
de Stael. Guizot here brings out with all 
their first causes and complexities the inter- 
mittent crises of liberty in France, which 
Madame de Stael guessed at dimly, simplified 
too much, and laid too directly to the charge 
of the representative government. Guizot's 
''History of Civilization" (1828-1829) is 
largely inspired by the '* Considerations : " it is 
civilization conceived of as the constant pro- 
gress of justice in society and the State; the 
exterior conditions of human life ameliorated, 
the inward man rendered more intelligent and 
more moral. Lastly, the " History of the Eng- 
lish Revolution," and the thoughtful discourse 
which precedes it (i 827-1 828), a history in 
which philosophy is mingled with narrative, is 
built on the plan of the " Considerations." The 
kinship is revealed even in the incidentals. 
It is from Madame de Stael that Guizot bor- 
rowed the idea of that noble discourse which 
he entitles *' Love in Marriage." 

I would ascribe to the same influence, though 
in less degree, the '' Historical Essays " on 
England by Charles de Remusat, who, while 
he made his literary debut in a dithyrambic arti-^ 
cle on the " Considerations," is rather more 
enthusiastic for Madame de Stael's genius than 
16 



242 Madame de StdeL 

inspired by it. The fundamental conception 
of the '' Considerations " gives way before the 
new school of revolutionary historians, — those 
who aim to isolate the French Revolution in 
French history, and make of it, not a series of 
events, but a series of symbols, a quasi-revela- 
tion which had its prophets and precursors, 
but which is without historical precedents. 
De Tocqueville's work on " The Old Regime " 
restores Madame de Stael's design to its hon- 
ored place; it renews the ties between Mon- 
tesquieu and the past of France. Something 
analogous happens in the history of the Em- 
pire. The marvellous chronicle of M. Thiers 
(1845) rehabilitates the times stigmatized by 
the " Ten Years of Exile." Lanfrey, who is 
otherwise aUied to Madame de Stael through 
Rousseau, undertakes this history, and brings 
back to the annals of the Napoleonic epoch 
the spirit of the "Considerations" (1867). 
With Lanfrey, Madame de Stael attains the 
limit of her influence upon the historians. 

Her literary influence, while very extended, 
does not reach so far. The book on '* Ger- 
many" was at its first appearance, and con- 
tinued for a long time to be, an event. It 
revealed to the great European public one 
form of the modern genius. '^ It was," says 
Goethe, *' like a powerful battering-ram open- 



Posterity in Literature. 243 

ing a great breach in the Chinese Wall of old 
prejudices raised between us and France. 
This book made them wish to know us be- 
yond the Rhine and beyond the Channel, and 
we have gained by it the means of exercising 
a lively influence in the far Occident. Let us 
therefore bless the disturbance caused by her 
stay among us, and the conflict of national 
originalities which at that time seemed to us 
vain and importunate." 

It was not alone a taste for German litera- 
ture, but a taste for all foreign literatures, which 
this book introduced into France. It is proper 
to ascribe to it the great work of literary diffu- 
sion and translation which reunited the friends 
and disciples of Madame de Stael, — Fauriel, 
Prosper de Barante, the translator of Schiller, 
and Guizot, who made the translation of Shak- 
speare possible. The influence of German 
thought upon French thought since 1820 has 
been considerable. Among those who then 
received, submitted to, or communicated this 
influence, there is no one who does not trace 
it more or less directly to Madame de Stael. 
The first impulse was hers, and we can dis- 
cover it even in the men who in other direc- 
tions are farthest removed from her, — Quinet, 
for example, and Michelet. We follow it 
nearer in Nodier ; we trace it afar in Hugo, 



244 Madame de Stdel. 

in his preface to '' Cromwell " and in his 
dramas. It is to be found widely dispersed 
among the hosts of fantastic ballads, the effu- 
sions and reveries of romanticism ; the artificial 
evocations of a Germany of conventionalities 
which speedily filled French literature, and 
from literature passed to the studios and 
concert-rooms. Victor Hugo's ** Rhin," De 
Musset's " Tyrol," '' La Coupe et ses Levres," 
— to quote haphazard ; then Mignon, Mar. 
guerite, and Mephisto, from Delacroix to 
Gounod, from Johannot and Scheffer to Ber- 
lioz, — all proceed in direct Hne from this book, 
one of the most suggestive that was ever writ- 
ten. We cannot separate from it even the 
brilliant and fecund school of travellers and 
critics who follow in the wake and lengthen 
the furrow as they plough it ; as, for example, 
J. J. Ampere, Gerard de Nerval, and Saint- 
Rene Taillandier. I mention only the dead. 
These however describe a Germany quite dif- 
ferent from that of 1810, and while following 
the path of Madame de Stael, they note the 
point beyond which her views did not extend. 
The *' Germany " of Madame de Stael is, 
they say, a chimera, and they reproach the au- 
thor with having deceived the French. No 
one has brought forward this reproach with 
more spirit than a German, Heinrich Heine, — 



Posterity in Literature, 245 

a bad German, say his compatriots, who turn 
their backs upon him in spite of his poetic 
genius; but certainly a bad Frenchman, and 
very unfaithful to those among us who believed 
him to be one of us because he, like Frederick 
before him, would make sport of us with our 
own words. His " Germany " is the counter- 
part and the biting criticism of that of Madame 
de Stael. " You have," he says to her, " ad- 
mired the flowers of which you know neither 
the roots nor the symbolic language." He 
adds, she heard nothing but the dithyrambs 
of a romantic company; she observed nothing 
but the windows of the palace at Weimar 
through the embroidered curtains, from be- 
hind a fan, while listening to the bright wits 
of the court. She did not distinguish in the 
literature the rubbish and romantic bric-a- 
brac ; in the customs, the pietistic hypocrisy ; 
in the political world, the corruption and in- 
trigue ; in the people, the rancor, lust, and 
brutality that hide themselves beneath a show 
of good-nature and servility. She could not 
see rising from the metaphysical chaos the 
State-god of Hegel, — a monster, more vora- 
cious, more crushing, more destructive to 
human liberties than the State-man of Louis 
XIV. and Napoleon. She did not foresee the 
horrible aridity which the philosophy of Kant 



246 Madame de StdeL 

would lay upon the souls of men, — the nihilism 
of his ideal, the disorder of unbridled reason, 
the furious invasion of the transcendent egOy 
the social revolution it involves, the philosoph- 
ical terror which would be its outcome, and 
beside which the visible terror of Robespierre 
would be merely a clown's amusement. ** You 
have more to fear," says Heine to the French 
people, " from Germany delivered than from 
the Holy Alliance altogether, with all its Croats 
and Cossacks." Heine wrote these lines in 
1839. The Germany that he announced bud- 
ded in 1840 and burst in 1848. 

How blind was Madame de Stael not to 
have discerned it thirty years earlier ! If she 
was deceived, Heine rectified her, and very 
vigorously too. But the Germany which 
Heine, after her and as a contradiction, 
revealed to France, left more illusions and 
made more dupes than Madame de Stael's 
ever ventured to do. Heine, in spite of his 
reiterated reserves, aroused in many minds 
the dream of a revolutionary and republican 
Germany whose first act of faith should be, in 
recognition of the baptism of the Rights of 
Man, to offer to France the left bank of the 
Rhine. Another Germany, one that may be 
seen between the lines of Stendhal, as observed 
from a supply-wagon by one of Napoleon's 



Posterity in Literature, 247 

commissaries, gives the impression of a peo- 
ple made up of '' big blond men of indo- 
lent habit," pusillanimous, obsequious, smokers, 
musicians, inn-keepers, and tax-payers, — an 
impression far more deceptive by reason of 
its air of personal observation and actual view 
of things. Madame de Stael foresaw the Ger- 
many of 181 3; that Germany contained even 
then the sap of the Germany which awoke in 
1840, arose in 1870, and marched to battle 
singing the popular Licder^ "" Der Gute Ka- 
raerad " and " Die Wacht am Rhein." That 
Germany was and is, let us not be mistaken, 
the hidden force which the machine of the 
Prussian State employs and puts in motion. 
We were astonished in 1870 to find Bliicher's 
old soldiers mingled with the mystic worship- 
pers of Wagner, the ingenious disciples of 
Schopenhauer, the learned, the thinkers, the 
savaiitSy poets, artists; and to see, in a war 
which aroused a whole armed nation, the 
fierce, the lustful, and the brutal qualities pre- 
vail. It is as frivolous and as unjust to re- 
proach Madame de Stael for that, as it would 
be to dispute the genius of Tolstoi and the 
beautiful revelations of M. de Vogiie, in case 
of a Russian invasion of Europe, because we 
found among them Souvarof s terrible hordes 
and the fierce conquerors of 18 12, as well as 



248 Madame de StdeL 

the tormented seekers after the ideal, and pil- 
grims from a far country. 

" Corinne " in turn helped to restore Italy 
in her own eyes and before the world. It 
drew aside the veil that had heretofore 
shrouded this land and nation in mystery, and 
promulgated throughout Europe a thought 
which became a political dogma : " The Ital- 
ians are far more remarkable for what they 
have been and for what they might be than for 
what they are at present." Madame de Stael 
initiated the Italians into romanticism. Silvio 
Pellico was evidently inspired by her ; in fact, 
she merited the opinion of an Italian who said : 
'' She foresaw the Italy of the future ; she was 
the precursor of a new order of things ; she 
showed herself to be a prophetess, and she 
anticipated, by apprehension, all that others 
have said since then without giving her due 
credit for it." 

In French literature we perceive Madame de 
Stael at the very start of the whole generation 
that follows. Sainte-Beuve, devoting one of 
his last articles to her in 1868, said: " She was 
one of the cults of my youth, and one that I 
have never abjured. . . . She contributed," he 
adds, " along with Chateaubriand and after 
Jean Jacques and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, to 
arouse in our souls the Hking for the marvel- 



Posterity in Literature. 249 

lous and the infinite." She did this, indeed, but 
she had no hope of succeeding. She proposed 
for the inspiration of the poetry of the future : 
"The enigma of human destiny; the contem- 
plative habit. . . . The soHtude of the forests, 
the Hmitless horizons, the starry heavens, . . . 
the eternal and the infinite which fill the soul 
of Christians." But she did not imagine that 
French poetry was adapted to this inspiration. 
" Our versification," she said, " is opposed to 
any abandonment of enthusiasm." She had 
not been three years dead ere the poet she 
hailed appeared before the world and borrowed 
from her not only inspiration but even the 
very title of one of his poems, — " Les 
Receuillements." 

Lamartine fulfilled Madame de Stael's ideas 
in poetry as Guizot did in history. In 181 1 
he followed the footsteps of Corinne and 
Nelvil through Italy. He had devoured the 
works on " Germany " and " The Passions." 
He execrated the Empire, he cursed Napoleon 
as '* the infernal genius raised up to degrade a 
whole generation and to uproot the entire 
national enthusiasm ! " Madame de Stael was 
his liberator. '' A sublime judge, tender and 
large-hearted ; a woman, adorable and compas- 
sionate." He acknowledges her in one of his 
first Meditations, dated 1820,— 



250 Madame de StdeL 

" But my soul, O Coppet, flies back to thy shores ! " ^ 

He pays her, in a certain way, the homage 
of his work in his discourse on the " Destinees 
de la Poesie " in 1834. Take all his verses on 
Italy, the Meditations on the Coliseum, on hu- 
manity, on immortality; read the apostrophes 
in the '' Pelerinage d'Harold," and you will 
find there, put into rhyme and harmony by 
the genius of the musician, all the songful 
strains of Corinne and Nelvil. The heroine of 
"Jocelyn" is a daughter of Delphine, more 
exalted and ardent; we recognize these cries 
of the abandoned Dido whose echoes still haunt 
Coppet: — 

" Her thrilling voice re-echoed through the grotto's 
sounding aisles : 

' Jocelyn ! Jocelyn ! 
Oh, come, restore me to your open arms, before their 

eyes, 
To that dear refuge where my heart the universe 
defies.' "2 

The formidable invective upon Bonaparte 
seems to leap like a latent flame from the work 
on " Considerations," — " He regards a human 

1 " Mais mon ame, 6 Coppet, s'envole vers tes rives ! " 

2 " Sa voix d'airain vibrait dans la grotte ebranlee: 

' Jocelyn ! Jocelyn ! 
Viens me rendre a leurs yeux, dans tes bras entr*ouverts. 
Get asile ou mon cceur braverait TUnivers.' " 



Posterity in Literature. 251 

being as a fact or thing, but not as a fellow- 
creature. He hates no more than he loves. 
His strength of will consists in the impertur- 
bable calculation of his egotism. . . . No 
spark of enthusiasm mingled with his desire 
to astound the human race. ..." 

Throw this thought into the soul of the 
poet, and you have it pictured in magnifi- 
cent coloring : — 

" Without joy thou didst ascend, without murmur thou 

didst fail ; 
Nothing human beat beneath thine impervious coat of 

mail : 
Without hate as without love, thou livedst only in the 

mind ; 
Like the lordly eagle reigning in the heavens soHtary 
Thou surveyedst the earth beneath thee but to gauge 

an adversary, 
And in thy claws another prey to find.^ 

Madame de Stael would have applauded 
Lamartine's discourses of 1840. She would 
have disavowed the " History of the Giron- 
dists." I imagine that there were many ro- 
mances and novels which had their origin in her 

1 " Tu grandis sans plaisir, tu tombas sans murmure, 
Rien d'humain ne battait sous ton epaisse armure : 
Sans haine et sans amour, tu vivais pour penser ; 
Comme Taigle regnant dans un ciel solitaire, 
Tu n'avais qu'un regard pour mesurer la terre, ' 

Et des serres pour I'embrasser." 



252 Madame de Stdel. 

own, — those by women particularly. In the 
work and life of many women who have appar- 
ently walked in her footsteps, there is an ele- 
ment of moral insubordination and revolt, a 
basis of restless discontent, a flavor of adven- 
ture from over the borders of Bohemia, which 
would have shocked and clashed with her own 
womanly good sense and social experience. 
Doubtless ** Mauprat " would have delighted 
her. She would have recognized in Lelia and 
Consuelo Corinne's own sisters. But I doubt 
that she would have approved of Indiana and 
Valentine, or would have liked the author even 
had she admired her. I fancy that she would 
have liked Daniel Stern better, and above all 
would have sympathized with him, while ad- 
miring him less. Delphine Gay with her artifi- 
ciality and her career of counterfeit and plagia- 
rism, would have been intolerable to her. Some 
of Balzac's women, as Camille Maupin and 
Madame de Mortsauf, would have touched 
her. She would have enjoyed the '* Memoirs 
of a Young Married Couple," and would have 
thought that Louise de Chauheu understood 
le gi'and amoitr when she wrote to her friend : 
" Oh ! how I should have loved Napoleon, and 
how I should have made him feel, had he loved 
me, that he was at my mercy ! " 

Balzac derived inspiration from Madame de 



Posterity in Literature, 253 

Stael's chronicles, and made use of her works, 
especially of *' The Passions," in devising the 
conversations of his refined and ardent lovers 
in high life. In his " Human Comedy," he 
gave no place to Corinne, however; he 
thought her too exceptional. " After her," 
he said, "■ there would be no place in this 
cycle for a Sappho." He does not allow her 
to appear in his microcosm, save by a vision 
and an allusion, like Napoleon, to vivify the 
drama. It was in the same way, during her 
sojourn near Vendome in 18 10, at the critical 
moment of the appearance of her " Germany," 
that Madame de Stael met Louis Lambert in 
rags, who read Swedenborg to her. She be- 
came interested in his singular genius, paid his 
tuition at the college of Vend6me from 181 1 to 
1 8 14 for the sake of snatching him from the 
Church and the Emperor ; then she disap- 
peared, and never thought of him again. 

Even the style of Madame de Stael's ro- 
mances, the mingling of passions and charac- 
ters with philosophy, travels, studies in politics, 
art, and history, declines soon after her day. 
"La Chartreuse de Parme "( 1839) deals ^s 
formidable a blow to '* Corinne" in this respect 
as did Heinrich Heine to the book on '' Ger- 
many." This style, although very lofty, seemed 
neglected with us until the accomplished author 



254 Madame de Stdel. 

of " Prince Vital," ** Grand CEuvre," and the 
*' Romance of a Virtuous Woman," suddenly 
revived it and brought it into favor, bringing 
back also to our literature the spirit of Madame 
de Stael through the same channels which at 
the same time were traversed by Lanfrey. 

There has been a prodigious amount of writ- 
ing on Madame de Stael. Of the many au- 
thors I will mention here but three as most 
important, and they will dispense with the 
necessity of reading any others : Madame 
Necker de Saussure, who collected the tradi- 
tions and painted the family portrait; Lady 
Blennerhasset, who gathered up all the scat- 
tered souvenirs and built a large monument of 
the clever mosaic ; Sainte-Beuve,who ransacked 
everything, learned everything, divined the rest, 
and marvellously reconstituted the whole. 
While Madame de Stael figures in Balzac merely 
in name, as an episodic personage, she is the 
heroine and the chief coryphee of Sainte-Beuve's 
Monday-Chats, that other and superior Hu- 
man Comedy. Salnte-Beuve, of all who have 
studied Madame de Stael, is the most pro- 
found and the most searching ; he has almost 
colored his work with the hue of a final judg- 
ment, and this judgment is an homage of 
admiration and sympathy. As the age has 
advanced, Madame de Stael has been raised 



Posterity in Literature, 255 

up and isolated from among her contempora- 
ries, — so much so that to-day, seventy-three 
years after her death, we are paying her more 
attention than she received when she died in 
Paris. And it is just. 

What she has left behind her goes to mani- 
fest especially her oratorical faculties, — her im- 
provisation and her copious and persuasive 
eloquence. She wrote on literature and poli- 
tics ; but she lacked, in order to become a po- 
litical woman, the reason and les C7itrailles 
dEtat which made Elizabeth, Catherine II., 
and Maria Theresa; and, in order to stand in 
the front rank of women writers, the style 
which made Madame de Sevigne and George 
Sand. The errors which one may lay hold 
on in her life are not intrinsically her own ; 
they are those of her times and her position, — 
those of the intoxication of the last years of 
Louis XVI., and of the bewilderment of the 
awakening of life under the Directory. She 
developed, on the contrary, more than any per- 
son of her day, the best qualities of her times, 
— sympathy and confidence in the progress of 
the human spirit, and faith in liberty. 

Let rhetoricians criticise the defects of her 
style ; let the parsimonious and the egotists 
blame her prodigality ; politicians, her chi- 
meras ; the meditative, her love of the world ; 



256 Madame de StdeL 

the worldly, her cultivation of letters ; the wise, 
her abandonment to passion ; the clever, her 
sensationalism : but go to the botton and you 
will find in her life only the desire to give and 
to obtain happiness, the need of loving and of 
being loved ; in her politics, only the sentiment 
of justice; in her literature, only the aspiration 
after the ideal, and throughout all, sincerity. 
She fought against her heart, her tempera- 
ment, even her renown ; and this renown, 
which fell to ,her above measure, was made 
up of more mourning than it ever brought 
her of joy. 

Madame de Stael left some words which are 
still salutary, and some great lessons which are 
always profitable. Pity for human misery is 
the perpetual exhortation of her work; the 
sentiment of the dignity of man, of his right 
to independence, of his true greatness founded 
on his moral elevation, is the inspiration ; the 
worship of justice and the love of liberty are 
the constant monitors and the conclusion. It 
is the daily bread of souls ; it is not enough 
that they think themselves surfeited by it, they 
must revive the appetite for it. Madame de 
Stael was, in her day, compassionate to the 
victims, and comforting to the disheartened ; 
her work, which is virile, is wholesome to our 
contemporaries. We still feel a breath of it 



Posterity in Literature. 257 

descending from the heights, and sweeping 
over the lower thoughts and the subtle fer- 
ments which disquiet life. 

Planted between two great ages, she seems 
the last flower of that which is about to close 
and the first seed of that which is to begin. 
A beautiful genius rather than an artist in 
literature and history, a great witness rather 
than an actor in the events of her times,, she 
deserves to live because she represents one of 
the best epochs of the French spirit. 



17 



INDEX, 



" Adelaide and Theodore," 
"Adeleand Edouard," 75. 
Albany, Countess of, 140. 
Alexander, Emperor, 183, 191 
Ampere, J. J., 244. 
Anglas, Boissy d', 70. 
Antoinette, Marie, 57. 
" Athalie," 209. 
Augustus of Prussia, 154. 



Balk, M. da, 154. 

Balzac, 196, 252-253, 254. 

Barante, Prosper de, 154, 243. 

Barras, 70. 

Beaumont, Madame de, 95, no. 

Berlioz, 244. 

Bernadotte, 112, 187, i8g, 190. 

Blennerhasset, Lady, 254. 

Boigne, Madame de, 173. 

Bonaparte, Joseph, 90-91, 127. 

Bonaparte, Lucien, 90-91. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 92-94, 96-99, 
108-115, 130, 152, 160, t6i, 168-170, 
174, i75> 176, 178, 180, 183, 190, 
192, 193, 194, 215, 225, 229, 230, 
249, 250-251. 

Bonstetten, 140, 155, 199. 

Boufflers, Comtesse de, 32. 

Broglie, Due Victor de, 20; 166, 195, 
238, 239. 

Broglie, Duchesse de, 195, 201. 

Broglie, Prince de, 45. 

Burger, 205. 

Byron, Lord, 188. 



Cabanis, 70. 

Canning, Lord, 188. 

" Capitaine Kernadec," 173. 

Catherine II., 255. 



Chateaubriand, 26, 105-107, 148-150, 

198, 203,^ 237, 248. 
Chenedolle, 80, 81, 95, 102. 
Ch6nier, Andre, 70, 105, 206. 
" Clarissa Harlowe," 77. 
Clermont-Tonnerre, 45. 
Condillac, 103, 124. 
"Considerations," 188, 196-197, 200, 

220-236, 241, 242, 250. ' 
Constant, Benjamin, 59-64, 71, 80,84, 

90,96, I02, no. III, 117-119, 128, 

139. «5S. 157-162, 173-174, 190, 193- 

194, 209, 238. 
Constant, Mademoiselle de, 159. 
" Corinne," 17-18, 21, 26, 59, 141, 

142-153, 156, 172, 234, 248, 250, 

252, 253. 
Courlande, Duchess of, 154. 
Crillon, 45. 



Danton, ioS. 

Daunou, 70. 

De Musset, 244. 

De Tocqueville, 240, 242. 

Decazes, Due, 197. 

Delacroix, 88, 244. 

" Delphine," 18, 20, 25, 26, 28, 33-34, 

58, 119-127, 147, 172, 195, 250. 
" Destinees de la Poesie," 250. 
" Don Carlos," 208. 
Droz, 240. 



'* Egmont," 209. 

Elizabeth, 255. 

Enghien, Due d', 137. 

English Constitution, 45. 

" Epistle to Misfortune," an, 75. 

Erskine, Lord, 188. 



26o 



Index, 



'' Essay on Fiction," 76-78. 
• Essays on the History of France, 
241. 



Fauriel, q8, no, 137, 243. 
" Faust," 209-211. 
Fenelon, 165. 
Fichte, 135-136, 213. 
Fievee, 127. 
Fontanes, 107, 113. 
Fouche, 97, 152, 196. 
Frederick of Prussia, 213. 
" Funereal Institutions," 8 



" G^NiE du Christianisme," 105. 
Genlis, Madame de, 126. 
G^rando, 102, no, 164. 
"Germany," 167-170, 182, 188, 195, 

200, 202-219, 242-244,249, 253. 
Ginguene, 70. 
Goethe, 102, 128, 129, 133, 134, 136- 

137, 148, 151, 204, 205, 207, 209, 

242. 
" Goetz," 209. 
Gounod, 244. 
Grey, Lord, 188. 

Guibert, Comte de, 26-27, 39» 120. 
Guizot, 155, 157, 224, 239, 240, 241, 

243, 249. 
Gustavus III. of Sweden, 32, 35. 



" Hagar," 156. 

Hardenberg, Charlotte de, 158-159, 

161. 
Harrowby, Lord, 188. 
Heine, Heinrich, 244-246, 253. 
'* Heloise," 77. 
Herder, 204, 212. 

"Hermann and Dorothea," 207, 209. 
" Historical Essays," 241. 
" History of Civilization," 241. 
" History of the English Revolution," 

241. 
" History of the Girondists," 251. 
Holland, Lord, 188. 
Hugo Victor, 243, 244. 
" Human Comedy," the, 253. 
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 140, 207. 



" Imitation," the, 165. 
" Iphigenia," 209. 



Jancourt, 52. 
"Jane Grey," 28. 
" Jocelyn," 250. 



Johannot, 244. 

Jordan, Camille, no, 127-128, 139- 

140, 238. 
Joubert, 199. 



Kant, 212, 245. 
Kleist, 170-171. 
Klopstock, 102, 107, 204. 
Koerner, 204. 
Koutousof, 184. 



" La Chartreuse de Parme," 146, 
253- 

La Rochefoucauld, 45. 

Lacretelle, 70. 

Lafayette, 45, 72. 

Lally, 45- 52. 

Lamartine, 26, 240, 249-251. 

Lambert, Louis, 253. 

Lanfrey, 242, 254. 

Lanjuinais, 70. 

Lansdowne, Lord, 188. 

"Le Mannequin," 173. 

Legendre, 75- 

Lespinasse, Mademoiselle de, 25, 27, 
1231 173- 

Lessing, 208. 212. 

" Lettres a Fontanes," 148. 

" Letters on Jean Jacques Rous- 
seau," 29, 3T, 34. 

Lezay, Adrien de, 70, 102. 

*' Life of M. Necker," 139. 

Ligne, Prince de, 162. 

" Literature in its Relations to Social 
Institutions," 99-117, 167. 

" Louise," 206. 

Louvait, 75. 

" Love in Marriage," 241. 



Mackintosh, Sir James, 188. 

Maistre, Joseph de, 57, 182. 

Malouet, 45, 52. 

" Manon Lescaut," 78. 

" Maria Stuart," 209. 

Maria Theresa, 255. 

" Marianne," 78. 

" Martyrs," the, 148. 

" Mauprat," 252. 

Meilhan, Senac de, 37. 

" Memoirs of a Young Married 

Couple," 252. 
Metternich, 169. 
Michelet, 243. 
Mirabeau, 48-49, 109. 
" Mirza," 28-29, 
Moliere, 210. 
Montesquieu, 103, 223, 224. 



Index, 



261 



Monti, 140, 154-155. 
" Montmorency," 28. 
Montmorency, Adrien de, 173. 
Montmorency, Mathieu de, 38-39, 45, 

52, 146, 154, 164, 174, 238. 
Moreau, 112, 187. 
Morellet, 70. 
Mounier, 45. 



Narbonne, Comte Louis de, 38, 39- 
40, 45, 46, 50, SI. 52, 53-56, 64, 88, 
no. 

Necker, Germaine, birth, 12 ; youth, 
12-14; reads Rousseau, 14; reads 
"Sorrows of Werther," 14; char- 
acter, 14-28 ; personal appearance, 
22-23 ; her admiration for Comte 
de Guibert, 26-27 ; earliest writ- 
ings, 28-34; marriage, 31-33- 

Necker, Monsieur, S-io, 21, 32, 42, 
43, 58, 78, 97> "3, 138. 139. 220, 
227, 239. 

Necker, Madame, 10-12, 31, 52, 58. 

Nemours, Dupont de, 70. 

Nerval, Gerard de, 244. 



Old Regime," the, 242. 



Pascal, 165. 

" Passions," the, 56, 78, 8r, 102, 157, 

170, 249, 253. _ 
" Paul and "Virginia," 77. 
"Pauline," 28. 
" Pelerinage d'Harold," 250. 
Pellico, Silvio, 248. 
Perigord, Abbe de. See Talleyrand. 
Peter the Great, 184. 
Pitt, 31, 65. 

" Princess of Cleves," the, 77. 
" Promenades about Rome," 146 



Queen of Naples, the, 140. 
Quinet, 243. 



Racine, 133, 208. 

Raynal, 13. 

Recamier, Madame, 56, 62, 95, no, 
127, 154, 174. ' 

Recent Views on Politics and Fi- 
nance, 113. 

" Reflections upon Internal Peace," 
73-74- . 

" Reflections upon the Peace," 65- 
69, 1 94. 

Remusat, Charles de, 241. 



Rdmusat, Madame de, 37. 

Riccoboni, Madame, 78. 

Richelieu, 184, 225, 229. 

Richelieu, Due de, 194. 

Rivarol, 37, 43-44- 

Robespierre, 88, 105. 

Rocca, Albert de, 171-173, 174, 175, 

1S6, 187, 194, 198, 199. 
Roederer, 70, 82, 88, 89, 97, 124. 
Roland, Madame, 30. 
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 14, 21, 26, 

29, 103, 248. 
RoyaHsts, the, 91. 



Sabran, Elzdar de, 154, 175. 

Saint-Beuve, 201, 248, 254. 

Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 248. 

Saussure, Madame Necker de, 7, iig, 
254- 

Scheffer, 244. 

Schiller, 102, 107, 128, 129, 132, 133- 
134, 135, 205, 208, 243. 

Schiller, Charlotte, 134. 

Schlegel, Wilhelm, 107, 137, 155, 174, 
212. 

Scott, Walter, 188-189. 

Serre, 23S. 

Sesenheim, 206. 

Sevigne, Madame de, 255. 

Shakspeare, 102, 243. 

" Shunamite," the, 156. 

Sieyes, 45, 46. 

Sismondi, 140, 155, 156, 173, 238. 

" Sophie," 28. 

Stael-Holstein, Baron, 32, 43, 56-57, 
65. 69, 75, .'I7-" 

Stael, Albertme de, 95, 195. 

Stael, Auguste de, 160. 

Stael, Madame Germaine de, mar- 
riage, 31-33; first appearance be- 
fore the world, 34-41 ; her political 
prominence, 42-75; flight to Eng- 
land, 52 ; defence of Marie Antoi- 
nette, 57 ; first meeting with Ben- 
jamin Constant, 59, 64 ; political 
writings, 65-69, 72-74 ; return to 
Paris, 69 ; literary activity, 75-88 ; 
an exile from Paris, 78 ; return 
from exile, 90; her hostility to 
Bonaparte, 92-99, 107-115; her 
children, 95, 175, 195, 199,200; in 
Switzerland, 97-98 ; her book on 
" Literature," 99-117 ; return from 
Switzerland, 109 ; interdiction of 
her salon, 115; exiled by Napo- 
leon, 127, 152 et seq. , death of her 
husband, 117; relations with Ben- 
jamin Constant, 117-119, 139, 157- 
162, 173-174; " Delphine," 119- 



262 



Index. 



127; at Weimar, 129-137; at Ber- 
lin, 137; death of M. Necker, 
138 ; in Italy, 139-142 ; " Corinne," 
142-153 ; at Coppet, 154-166 ; her 
book on " Germany," see " Ger- 
many; " married to M. de Rocca, 
171-173 ; flight from Coppet, 174- 
176; her work on "Exile," 177- 
180; flight through Europe, iSi- 
192; last days, 193-201 ; her death, 
198-199 ; her influence on posterity, 

237-257- 
Stein, Baron, 182, 195, 
Stendhal, 146, 246. 
Suard, 70. 
"Suicide," 85, 170. 



Taillandier, Saint-Rene, 244- 
Talleyrand, Abbe de Perigord, 38, 39, 

45, 46, 52, 64, 71, 90, 96, no, 122, 

162, 196. 
"Ten Years of Exile," 170, 177-180, 

187, 200, 242. 
Tesse, Madame de, no. 



Thiers, M., 242. 
"Tom Jones," 77. 

Toulongeon, 45. 

Tracy, 70. 

"Truth and Poetry," 206. 



Uhland, 204. 



ViLLERS, Charles de, 102, 128. 
Voght, le Baron de, 154. 
Vos, 206. 



" Wallenstein," 209. 
Wellington, 191. 
Werner, Zacharias, 154. 
Werther, 14, 77. 
Wickham, 88. 
Wieland, 102,204-205. 
" Wilhelm Tell," 209, 21 



ZuLMA," 75-76. 



3i^77-5 



